“Turn that frown upside down” with classic art that’s been fixed by AI to improve your mood! Witness the improvement of the “smarmy horse” version of Guernica.

Background:

Sometimes, classic art intentionally evokes a negative emotion. Here are some classic examples:

The Issue:

However, perhaps the world is already cruel enough, and humans don’t need to be subjected to further psychological trauma.

But how can we continue to enjoy classic art while simultaneously making sure our fragile emotional state is coddled at all times?

Proposal:

AI to the rescue! First, let’s examine a piece of art that might be psychologically upsetting (Figure 1):

Fig. 1: Here, we see a poor orphan being mistreated in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and a prompt with a suggestion of how we can “fix” this scene.

With the power of AI (in this case, Google Gemini), maybe we can improve the scene in Figure 1 to make it more fun and less traumatizing. The results speak for themselves (Figure 2)!

Fig. 2: Now we’re seeing a fun party instead. According to the caption, “Oliver Twist Asks for Moty.” Concerningly, most of the faces are still quite worried, which could hint at an even more ominous undercurrent to this party. But we’ll avoid thinking about that!

Likewise, the horrors of war depicted in Picasso’s Guernica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(Picasso)) are intentionally disturbing (Figure 3).

Fig. 3: This horse’s expression is quite unsettling to the viewer.

But once again we’re able to easily revise the artwork so that the horse is having a great time (Figure 4):

Fig. 4: This was probably the artist’s original intent, but he was limited by the technology of the time.

Conclusion:

Modifying classic art to avoid even the slighting hint of discomfort in the viewer is now not only possible, but easy!

PROS: Improves the psychological state of visitors to art museums.

CONS: None, art historians will probably love it too.

Bonus Fig. 5: Saturn Devouring an Exceptionally Delicious Giant Fried Chicken Drumstick.

Originally published 2025-12-22.