This editorial on AI-generated street art was originally published in my street art newsletter, Beyond the Walls, which lands in inboxes on the 1st of every month with reflections and unexpected finds. This excerpt is from the January 1st, 2026, edition. Subscribe here to receive future issues.
London’s Nightmarish Christmas Mural shows what happens when AI replaces artists
A large Christmas mural generated using artificial intelligence was installed in southwest London. Intended to evoke a festive winter scene inspired by the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the image instead unsettled viewers with its distorted figures and surreal inconsistencies.
From a distance, it appeared to depict a frozen Thames animated by crowds and winter activity.
Up close, the image revealed an unsettling accumulation of visual anomalies: grotesquely contorted faces, warped Santa Clauses and snowmen, animals bleeding into one another, and figures with misshapen bodies struggling to skate across shallow, foamy water, while elsewhere crowds packed into an improbably oversized wooden boat.
As photos circulated widely on social media, public reaction ranged from mockery to concern, with many questioning how such a visibly flawed and unsettling image was approved for display in a shared urban space.
The Chicago Mural Controversy
Sadly, this AI-generated mural isn’t an isolated case. Earlier this year in Chicago, a public mural sparked significant backlash after it emerged that the artwork was generated by artificial intelligence rather than created by a local artist or through community collaboration.
What had been expected to be a celebration of community and culture instead drew criticism as it lacked the authenticity, nuance and human voice typical of murals in the city’s long public-art tradition, while at the same time bypassing opportunities for real artists to contribute to public narrative and place-making.
AI in Public Art: A Question of Representation and Responsibility
Both episodes have sparked broader conversation about the role of AI in public art, authenticity in representation, and how decisions about mural production should involve community voices rather than defaulting to automated tools.
I found images online of the slogan “Hire real artists” spray-painted over other examples of AI-generated urban art, an understandable and legitimate reaction that speaks to a deeper unease about how generative AI is being deployed in public contexts.
The criticism is not simply a rejection of technology, but a response to processes that replace human labour, authorship, and community work with automated image production. In street art, the role of the artist extends beyond producing an image: it involves research, intention, dialogue with the community, analysis of the context, vision, and accountability.
Street art is not just a visual outcome but a human practice rooted in decision-making, context and lived experience.
With AI-generated works, instead, the result feels disconnected, hollow or careless, reinforcing the perception that speed and cost have been prioritised over meaning and craft.
🤔 But What If the Distorted Christmas Mural Was Intentional?
Today’s AI is far too advanced to produce such blatant hallucinations by accident, and that is what makes those bizarre visuals feel to me intentional rather than careless. I read the accumulation of errors, distortions and surreal mismatches less like a technical failure and more like a provocation, one designed to force viewers to confront the role of the artist, or the absence of one.
While researching, I came across a persistent rumour attributing the mural to Mat Collishaw, a YBA artist known for his long-standing interest in provocation and, more recently, for his extensive use of AI as an artistic tool. That connection is what fuelled the speculation in the first place. Although no confirmation ever arrived and the artist did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the idea remains compelling. At the very least, it suggests the possibility that an artist deliberately amplified AI’s visual hallucinations to trigger a debate about authorship, intention and responsibility in public space.
This reading feels to me more convincing than the alternative explanation of an unsupervised intern, a rushed approval process and a 100-foot image installed without anyone noticing that something was fundamentally off.
What remains difficult to understand for me is why no one has stepped forward to explain that the mural may have been made on purpose, a silence that ultimately weakens its potential to be read as a deliberate artistic gesture rather than a simple oversight.
If that were the case, then the outrage, confusion and discussion it generated, culminating in the mural being torn down shortly after installation, should be seen not as failures but as outcomes.
After all, this is exactly what meaningful art has always done: unsettle, provoke, invite interpretation, and push us to question how images are made, who makes them, and why.
