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Stephen Smith says he didn’t spend four years refining his hand-drawn illustrations — learning anatomy, perspective, and texture — only to be eclipsed by a prompt of text fed into a machine. Neither did Sarah Mailloux. The two senior illustration majors at UMass Dartmouth have spent their final semester not just finishing their portfolios — but preparing to wage war against what they see as a creeping threat to the future of art: artificial intelligence (AI).
Their battleground is the university gallery at UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual & Performing Arts (CVPA), where graduating seniors unveil a single, self-directed work meant to reflect the full arc of their artistic evolution. Their weapon: a petition calling on the university to regulate the use of generative AI in the exhibit — to either ban artificial projects or require that they be labeled as such.
Smith and Mailloux say they’ve heard students say they’re using AI to write the texts accompanying their capstone projects — and in some cases, to fully produce the art itself.
Smith said some arts professors are loose with rules around using AI or are even encouraging its use. “And so, we have caught wind that there are a handful of students that are trying to pass off projects that are 100% start to finish AI-generated: text, imagery, concept, full, whole nine yards,” he said. “Students are just cutting corners because they can. And it just sucks.”
In the weeks leading up to the show, Mailloux and Smith circulated fluorescent pink flyers bearing a QR code and the words “BAN AI!” The petition they launched has drawn over 275 signatures. UMass Dartmouth, despite confirming awareness of the petition, took no public action. The first part of the two-part exhibition has already opened — without any labels identifying AI use. The second part opens Friday at the CVPA Campus Gallery.
For Smith and Mailloux, the concern isn’t just about fairness at UMass Dartmouth. Their unrest is a call to action. As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in campus life, they say university policies regulating it remain vague, inconsistent, or absent — a gap that leaves students to navigate a new creative frontier with no clear map.
What the capstone showing is and why policies matter
Every year, graduating art and design students at UMass Dartmouth organize a gallery show on campus. Each student focuses on one project of their own — deciding what to work on, how to present it, and how it can reflect everything they’ve learned during their time at the university. It’s a chance to mark their growth and show their work to the public.
A companion website, built alongside the physical show, catalogs each student’s project — something potential clients and employers can find long after graduation.
Time to prepare varies by discipline. In illustration, students like Smith and Mailloux are given nearly three semesters to build their capstone pieces. But without clear rules on AI, they worry that months of effort may end up hanging beside work generated in seconds.
“We have literally been in school for years now. And capstone is supposed to be the big ending celebration of everything that you learned, how you’ve grown as an artist, how your style has become established,” said Mailloux. “It’s just so inauthentic to just run a prompt through a computer and go, ‘Okay, well, I guess my capstone is done. I have three months off.’”
Jess Worby, a professor of illustration at UMass Dartmouth, says that when Mailloux, Smith, and other students raised concerns about AI-generated images appearing in the senior exhibit, he reached out to other capstone professors to try to start a broader conversation about the use of AI in their classes. No one addressed the issue.
“After they collected the signatures,” he said, “I was sort of hoping that the dean’s office would realize that this issue had come to a head and that we really need policy around it.”
The Faculty Senate created a university-wide policy on AI last fall, according to Assistant Vice Chancellor Ryan Merrill. The policy, shared with The Light, leaves most decisions to individual faculty. But it sets one clear rule: no student or instructor may present AI-generated work as original. Any content made with a chatbot or image generator must be credited like any other source.
At least three art professors told The Light they never received or read the policy.
A. Lawrence Jenkens, dean of the arts college, also said he’s unaware of any AI policy currently in place. “From what I can tell by looking back at the Faculty Senate meeting, they approved the creation of a policy — but if that policy exists, I have no knowledge of it ever being implemented,” he said. Jenkens added that, to his knowledge, the art department never instructed senior students to disclose the use of AI in their capstone work.
In the absence of an official directive, enforcement falls to individual instructors — each left to decide where to draw the line.
Smith described the dissonance as unsettling. “In an English class I’ve taken, the professors were clear: ‘No ChatGPT, no anything. If you’re caught using it, it’s plagiarism — you’ll fail the course or be expelled,’” he said. “So to have other professors allowing it — especially art professors treating it like a tool — it’s just weird.”
What is AI, and what is art?
Artificial intelligence is a machine’s attempt to imitate human thought. By combining algorithms, data, and computing power, AI systems can learn, solve problems, interpret language, and even perceive the world in ways that once seemed uniquely human. The 2022 release of ChatGPT-3.5 vividly illustrated generative AI’s ability to create convincingly human-like text, images, audio, and more — swiftly raising profound questions about the future of work.
A Pew Research Center poll found that most Americans expect generative AI to reshape the job market over the next two decades — and not for the better. A Brookings Institution report estimated that more than 30% of U.S. workers could soon find at least half their job duties altered by these tools.
Still, not everyone sees a threat. For some artists, generative AI has become more collaborator than competitor — a tool that expands creative potential rather than eclipsing it.
Anne Morgan Spalter is one of them. A digital artist with more than three decades in the field, Spalter is considered a pioneer of the genre. In the 1990s, she established the first digital fine arts courses at both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design — long before artificial intelligence entered our lives.
Spalter now splits her time between New York and California. Her ties to the area are personal — her parents are from South Dartmouth.
Spalter said she would oppose a ban on AI in universities, but sees no downside to labeling artworks. “I don’t care if people know I use AI in my artwork,” she said. Rather than ignore the issue, she believes universities should foster open dialogue. She sees the students’ petition as an opportunity to bring critical conversations into the classroom.
“I don’t think there’s one big right answer,” she said. “It’s about asking: What are the issues? What is art? Why are we doing this? What’s a tool?” She paused, then added: “It’s a good opportunity to bring up a lot of good questions, rather than just an ugly battle.”
Over the years, she has watched skepticism toward digital art slowly erode. Even the staunchest critics, she noted, often come around — some reluctantly, others with surprising enthusiasm.
“When I first heard about people making art with the computer,” Spalter recalled, “I thought, that’s a horrible idea. Art should be made by hand.”
After graduation, while working in a banking office in New York, her perspective began to shift. Days blurred into evenings as she was confined to a cubicle and tethered to a screen. The job was stable, but creatively suffocating. So she began experimenting with making art on the very machine she spent her days operating.
“It takes a while sometimes, I think, for these new technologies to be integrated — for people to understand what they are,” Spalter said. “One of the things that people react to is the idea that the computer is usurping some aspect of human creativity.”
Similar anxieties surfaced with the invention of photography, Spalter pointed out. At the time, critics dismissed it as the push of a button, void of creativity, and warned that it would steal work from portrait painters. “I would say photography did take away work from portrait painters — so it’s not completely wrong,” she said. But it also gave rise to entirely new professions, new creative industries, and even a new fine art form. The same, she suggested, might hold true for AI.
What’s next
Mailloux and Smith stand inside the first part of this year’s exhibition at the CVPA Campus Gallery, each beside a portion of their capstone projects — selected illustrations they chose to put on display.
Mailloux’s presentation features Buttons, a plush raccoon who lives on a New England farm. He gardens, collects trinkets, and takes care of the animals around him. The lines that shape him are soft and unhurried, rendered in black and white or washed in gentle pastels. She began creating him in 2021, gradually building a full cast of characters through class assignments and personal projects.
But Buttons isn’t just a whimsical drawing. He’s a stand-in for Mailloux’s own experience with regulating her emotions while living with autism. “It’s not our fault if we struggle with situations others deem easy,” she writes in the description.
Smith’s project, Aupheth, is a fictional universe — complete with its own mythology, ecosystems, conflicts, and creatures. Dragons, sea monsters, and ancient wars populate its imagined terrain, brought to life through vivid illustrations and dense written histories that chart the rise and fall of kingdoms. On display are a few illustrations: a giant pink octopus dragging a ship beneath storm-tossed waves, a collection of combat artifacts rendered with precision. Alongside them, a paper booklet, made to look like aged leather, contains the tales and backstory of the world of Aupheth, its name embossed across the front. At first, Smith imagined it as a kind of tabletop game. “But I changed it because I love writing and I wanted that in my art,” he said.
The first part of the exhibition, where Mailloux and Smith showed their work, has now ended. On April 25, the second round opens — featuring students from animation, graphic design, integrated studio arts, and more. It’s unclear whether this second wave will include labels identifying projects that used AI. There were none in the first.
“We know AI isn’t going anywhere,” said Smith. “We’re hoping that, at the bare minimum, things will change for future students.”
Smith and Mailloux aren’t sure whether the petition will leave a lasting mark — or if more students will continue their fight. But they say a label would go a long way — both in fairness and in helping people understand the difference between AI-generated and human-made art.
“I think a lot of people don’t even recognize it,” said Mailloux. “Our parents will send us these AI posts being like, ‘Isn’t this so cool?’ And we’re like, ‘That’s literally AI.’ And they’re shocked.”
Email Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org
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As a former student of UMD’s CVPA I have to say I admire the tenacity that the students have put forth. I visited the gallery on campus and Stephen and Sarah’s work is incredible. As a former student of UMD’s CVPA program I have to also say that the current dean is uninspiring and there are a lot of shortcomings within the program. This is no fault of the professors. They’re all incredible and care deeply for their students. When the classrooms have desks and chairs being held up by hold text books and the leaks are so bad that the stairwell is riddled with buckets, I believe there is a greater problem at large with CVPA. That being said, all of that led me to believe that Stephen’s petition (which I signed months ago) would fall on deaf ears.
However, to play Devil’s Advocate a bit…I do believe that some sort of policy and integration for AI needs to be implemented into the curriculum. Unfortunately, we can’t ignore AI’s growth. AI is rapidly replacing jobs, especially in the creative spaces. When I was a student, one of my professors encouraged me to embrace it and use it as a tool, but not as the entire driving creative force. Learning to properly leverage AI tools would keep you ahead of the game instead of falling behind. The art that Stephen and Sarah created (among others, I just discuss these two talented artists as they’re in the article) is amazing and you can distinctly tell that there is a creative backbone here and that it is original without the assistance of AI. It’s disheartening to learn that students are creating projects, allegedly with full AI generation. But I don’t believe that a discussion can’t happen.
UMD and other schools across the nation need to figure out how to navigate a world that is embracing AI quickly. What are the policies going to be next year? I don’t believe they should truly ban the use of AI but I do think it should moderated and watched by their professors and mentors to determine an appropriate use while also showing that they’ve learned something in the 2-4 years of attending UMass Dartmouth’s classes. Perhaps take Meta’s method here, and require students that utilize AI in their Capstone to put a broad “AI Generated Content” label on their piece. I think you’d truly learn something about how a student feels about it, and some would be uncomfortable about having to have an AI label on their work and would probably avoid it.
I worked in a television art department and taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts for many years. Thankfully, the concern over AI-generated artwork was not an issue simply because it didn’t exist. At the time, there were arguments about using technology to aid in creative work, such as using a “Lucy” to trace an image onto a flat surface. There have always been shortcut systems in the arts, but
imagery takes the controversy to a new level and should be documented in the description of the work.