Is this by Rothko or a robot? We ask the experts to tell the difference between human and AI art

An art historian, a critic and a gallerist are tasked with guessing whether a piece is by an important artist or a clever bot. It turns out it's harder than it looks

The year 2022 was when AI-generated images went viral. Online, you may have come across very realistic yet suspiciously improbable images of, say, an astronaut riding a horse through space or an avocado doubling as an armchair.

Numerous new generators - including Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion - offer anyone with an internet connection the chance to conjure up their own strange apparition, simply by typing in a prompt" for the AI. (For example, astronaut astride horse on Mars". Or, for this article, Mark Rothko Abstract Expressionist oil painting" - yes, the image above isn't a real Rothko.) The possibilities have been endless, the opportunity for meme-making infinite.