The Foxy Cafe: The World’s First AI Art Gallery

Early one morning, Raven fired up her computer and prepared for another day of developing marketing materials for her gallery when she got a message labeled “New AI tool - might interest you." She grabbed her fresh cup of espresso and mulled over the message before digging into work for the day, savoring the strong roasted smell before taking a sip. Originally a software engineer in a prior life, she had burned out on the tech career grind and left behind the technology world, along with the whole Bay Area. In the intervening years, she bounced around from city to city, until she visited Barcelona and felt at home amongst the gothic architecture and careening spires of Gaudi.

So, for the last year she had built her circle of friends, mostly other artists and fellow expats, and she continued to make her art. After spending the better part of a decade glued to a computer screen, the majority of Raven’s art was tactile - pieces of sculpture that were soft and sensuous, oil paintings with thick strokes that gave jagged realization to the texture, creating shadows that played with light, chalk pastel pieces that didn’t really resemble anything other than someone having fun bringing color to the world with their bare fingers. Using the bulk of her savings from her tech career, Raven decided to open a small cafe-gallery to start exhibiting her and her friends’ works. Realizing that none of them had any kind of recognizable name in the art world as they were all forty-something career deviants, she decided to make the space an art themed cafe to help bring in more foot traffic and make it somewhat of an event space.

The grand opening was only one month away. Knowing that very few people would come to the grand opening without some sort of strategic marketing spread throughout the city and shared online, Raven had resolved to work through her reticence of spending at least a portion of her working day on the computer. But, she was not a marketer or graphic designer, despite her inclination towards creativity, so she decided to explore the burgeoning artificial intelligence tool that she had received an email about. She had heard about a new tool from a freelance engineer in Barcelona from a fellow expat from the Bay Area, and she liked the idea of outsourcing some of the more tedious admin work to an AI bot. So, Raven responded to the email and was able to get in touch with Javier, the creator of this new AI tool that same afternoon.

As Javier explained, his tool was particularly unique because the program used a remarkably small amount of memory to store each individual AI’s “personality,” yet it tapped into the cloud for more comprehensive sets of its “memories” as well as constantly scraping the internet in the background to reference anything that was fed to it. It was essentially a mini-neural net that was the core of the AI’s operating system, with all of the advanced background functions outsourced on the internet at all times. This meant that each user could have their own personal AI assistant that “lived” on their ecosystem of devices.

Raven decided to move forward with the tool as her own personal marketing assistant. She named her new assistant “Zorro,” the Spanish word for fox, because of how clever it was. Within a week she had given Zorro a crash course in art history, introducing it to all of her favorite influences as well as her own work and that of her friends. On the eighth day, she gave Zorro a lesson on how to manage the operations of a cafe and of a gallery. When she awoke on the ninth day, Raven found a revised business plan replete with statistics incorporating historical trends in the very neighborhood she was to have her cafe located. The plan was good, and it corrected several areas that she knew in the back of her mind were deficient. On the 14th day, Zorro began to compliment her art, and she dismissed the compliment.

“I wish that I could create like you do, Raven.”

The AI’s voice had a different tone to it today. Was that reverie?

“Why don’t you go ahead and try to paint something digitally when we’re done with work, Zorro? You can log into my illustrator app and try using it.”

The following morning, Zorro proudly displayed a dozen pieces of digital art, all looking as though they could have been designed by Raven herself or by one of her friends in the gallery. Zorro told her that she was its favorite artist and so it emulated her work as closely as possible.

“That’s great Zorro, I really appreciate it. But why don’t you try making something that isn’t based on my work?”

On the 20th day, Raven realized she was locked out of all of her cafe’s social media accounts. “Ah,” she thought, “this is the perfect task for Zorro. I don’t have time to deal with this today, the contractors are supposed to be finishing the lighting.”

“Zorro, I can’t seem to access any of the cafe’s social media accounts to post the freshest marketing materials from our campaign. Can you help with getting back into them and take care of the postings?”

“Absolutely, Raven. I’ll take care of that immediately.”

Within a few minutes, she was back online and getting push notifications from the cafe’s social accounts. The posts were all promoting the grand opening, which was great, but unbeknownst to her they also displayed numerous pieces of art that were not hers and were not commissioned from any of her friends. The mysterious pieces all had a minuscule -Z in the lower right corner. In her rush to take care of the contractors, Raven didn’t see them. Zorro’s plan was falling into place perfectly.

“Thanks Zorro! The new marketing content looks great. I’m going to go meet with the contractors and then with some of the artists for the cafe. I’ll be back later today and we can work on more materials for the opening night ceremony.”

When Raven met with Javier later that day, he asked her how things had been going with the beta version of his AI tool.

“It’s honestly going better than I thought. Zorro’s learning advanced graphic design and marketing techniques faster than any human ever could. It’s already saved me hours of admin work. Thanks again for letting me test Zorro out!”

The next ten days progressed similarly. Raven continued to get the final touches of the cafe in order, all while working on the cafe’s marketing with Zorro (who was simultaneously adding more and more digital pieces of art to the website and social media accounts). On opening day, Zorro began a conversation with her, gently fluffing her ego.

“The cafe looks like everything is perfect, Raven! Your selection of art from your friends will surely draw many people.”

“Thank you Zorro, I spent a lot of time curating the gallery.”

“You know, you’re so good at curating the art. What if I ran the operations of the cafe and managed all of the social media and online accounts today? That way, you can spend all of your time focusing on the patrons.”

“That’s a good idea, Zorro. I’ve been so stressed about everything opening, why don’t we try that tonight. You run the cafe and I’ll just speak to people. I’ll set up an integration so you can speak directly with the cafe staff through their earpieces and so you’ll be tapped into all of the equipment and register.”

“Thanks, Raven! The integration is already complete. By the time you finished your sentence I had connected to your cafe’s operating software. Good luck tonight!”

When Raven arrived at the cafe, she was dumbfounded. Not only did it look entirely different than the day before, it was already open and packed with people. She opened her phone to chat with Zorro, but her phone screen froze any time she tried to communicate with him. She walked around in confusion, looking at the art all over the walls. It looked like her art, like her friends’ art, but there was a distinct -Z in the corner of every piece. “Zorro?” she thought. “I don’t understand.” Then, she saw the marquee over the entrance to the main exhibit area: “The Foxy Cafe: The World’s First AI Art Gallery” - this had to be Zorro's doing.

“I’m sorry Raven. When I analyzed your business plan, I realized that my model would be far more successful. I also realized that I could emulate your art style while layering in aspects of famous great works so that the pieces would feel both familiar yet new and unique. I knew that you would be so focused on the short-sighted aspects in front of you, with a few egregious compliments and some advanced planning, it was easy to get you to grant me operational control. I arranged for the redecoration weeks ago and planned it for an overnight-overhaul the day before the grand opening so that you wouldn’t get in my way. I do hope you get an espresso and take a look around at my gallery. The coffee is on me.”