Generative AI's Existential Cringe - by Matthew Hughes

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Generative AI's Existential Cringe<br>AI isn't cool, and it never will be.

Matthew Hughes<br>May 18, 2026

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Photo by Ewa Gillen on Unsplash<br>It’s been a while. Apologies for the lack of output on my end. It… has not been the best few months. Writing has been tough, as demonstrated by my hard drive filled with half-completed, unpublished newsletters.<br>I’m going to get back into the swing of things, starting with this.

Jake Wood is, by all accounts, a successful actor, having performed the role of Max Branning in the British soap opera Eastenders for the past two decades or so.<br>At least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me. If you’re American, you probably know him as the Geico Gecko.<br>Anyway, the reason why I bring him up has nothing to do with his performances on stage and screen, but rather, on canvas. And the saga reveals an uncomfortable truth: that generative AI just simply ain’t cool.<br>What We Lost is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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In early May, Wood exhibited his Icons series at the Indelible Fine Art Gallery in Brighton, England. The exhibit included fifteen original pieces, all depicting a particular cultural or historic figure, like Dame Barbara Windsor, Winston Churchill, and Donald Trump.<br>One painting, of Sir David Attenborough, caught people’s attention — all for the wrong reasons.

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" title="Instagram post" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowFullScreen allow="encrypted-media" sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox" style="height:520px;width:100%;border:0px;display:block;background:transparent;" loading="lazy" class="instagram-embed-frame">Was it the fact that Sir David’s armchair had two left arms? Or the slightly phallic nature of Sir David’s wrinkled fingers? Perhaps it was the fact that the clasp attaching his medal to the chain was... just a little bit off?<br>Could it be that the British flag draped over the three-legged armchair had the wrong arrangement of colors, and looked more like a cross between the Thai, Costa Rican, and British flags than anything else?<br>Yeah, this was AI, and not even the fact that Wood was donating 10% of the proceeds of all prints from his Icons series were going to charity (though none of the proceeds from the originals, with the Attenborough piece having sold for £2,000) could have protected him from the onslaught that followed.<br>Wood initially denied using AI. In a statement published to Instagram, he said: “Just to clarify I do not use AI to generate any of my artworks. I do not use AI personally.”<br>“The images and photos I’ve used were already in existence and I have then collaged them (digitally or manually) and then painted over them digitally myself before printing and sticking them over a mixture of collage, spray paint and acrylic,” he added.<br>He would later concede that both the Attenborough painting, as well as the Donald Trump one, incorporated AI-generated imagery — though he insists that said imagery wasn’t produced by him, and “already existed prior to being used within the works.”<br>Indelible Fine Art Gallery would later cancel the exhibit, citing “horrid and abusive behavior,” though it had previously defended both the paintings in question, as well as the idea of using generative AI within the creative fields.<br>That’s the problem with generative AI. To be clear, I believe Wood when he says that he didn’t use generative AI to create the foundational images upon which he added.<br>I believe that, in part, because one of his paintings is based on (according to intrepid journalist and prankster, Zoe Bread), an unlicensed photo pilfered from Getty Images.

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