Street artist Rogue One to paint Glasgow 'AI' mural

A Glasgow street artist has announced he will be designing and painting a controversial mural in the city that was criticised for being designed using AI.

Glasgow City Council approved plans for a new mural on a wall in Elmbank Street earlier this week, but the plans received ferocious online criticism for a suggested design that included a bald eagle - a bird not native to Scotland - and images of Highland cows, stags, a steam train and wind farms.

Applicant Derek Paterson said the illustration was supposed to be an indicative drawing, not a concrete proposal.

Now long-standing street artist Rogue One has stated on social media he will be designing the final version.

Several artists had raised concerns regarding the proposal's use of AI in the design, saying humans needed to be involved in the process from the start.

However Rogue One - real name Bobby McNamara - said the mural was in the very early stages but he had been approached last year about it.

He did not have time to create a design for the proposal, which is why Derek Paterson, the owner of the company Balmoral Estates, submitted it instead.

McNamara explained: "Derek is no artist, but he wanted to get the ball rolling. He wanted to see if he could get planning permission and perhaps some funding to actually make a new mural happen.

"So he tried AI to make a mock up of an idea for the purpose of forms, with the full intention of allow(ing) me to create a complete artistically done design, either similar or even a different theme, if everything was granted."

He added it would be months before anything else was done regarding the mural, but that it would be fully painted and designed by himself.

Paterson previously told BBC Scotland News he had received considerable online abuse regarding the mural.

Artists had expressed frustration over the proposal, at a time when there are fears many artists are losing income from AI being used instead of hiring a human to carry out work.

Ashley Rawson - who has previously been involved in work under the alias "the AI Assassin" - said involving AI was an example of a race to the bottom culturally, and was going down a "meaningless, dehumanised, cost-saving route".

Inverness artist Michael Forbes, who previously warned about the amount of artists losing their livelihoods due to AI's growing popularity, said the initial illustration was like a "late night cheese induced fever dream".

He said: "It's soulless, banal and sterile - it says absolutely nothing, just a generic jumble of random imagery.

"Why the bald eagle? Why has it got two heads? There's the angle of the wind turbine vanes, the Disney castle, who's that bloke and what's he doing?"

However he added he hoped the actual finished design would not resemble the mock-up.