Meet Rick Dick, the AI artist blurring reality with playful and provocative imagery – interview
The 30-something Italian’s works, like his mock American Vogue cover and Met Gala fashion imagery, have drawn approval from his Instagram followers
Scrolling Instagram these days, you’re bound to find one or two posts that make you pause and second-guess reality every now and then. AI, whether through heavily fine-tuned and retouched hyperrealistic images you’d mistake for the real thing or hastily made surrealist slop generated by video apps like Sora, has taken over our feeds. The gap between too-real-to-be-true and wacky, somewhat nonsensical clickbait, however, is where AI artist Rick Dick operates. At once playful and provocative, his images pander both to the tasteful point of view so familiar to high fashion editorials and brand campaigns, and the more banal, sometimes predictable, always chronically online internet user behaviour driven by pop culture trends.