Imagine stepping into a museum where art isn’t just observed—it’s transformed before your eyes. That’s the magic of Diffuse Control by Beeple, an immersive, AI-driven sculpture that blurs the line between creator and audience. On display at LACMA until January 4, 2026, this groundbreaking installation invites visitors to collaborate with artificial intelligence, reshaping public domain artworks from the museum’s collection in real time. But here’s where it gets controversial: as the AI remixes these pieces, it raises questions about authorship, the nature of art, and the role of human creativity in an increasingly digital world. Is this the future of art, or a step too far into the realm of machines? You decide.
Through a custom website, museum-goers interact with the AI generative system, which reinterprets artworks across five iterations. The sculpture itself, a towering arrangement of 12 large video screens, displays the evolving creations, allowing the audience to become co-creators. One such iteration, Soft Jelly, curated by Jordan David, Cameron Schrier Foundation Fellow in Chinese and Korean Art, explores the human and non-human body in motion. But this is the part most people miss: the artworks selected for Soft Jelly aren’t just transformed—they’re deconstructed and reimagined in ways that challenge our understanding of form and identity.
Take Edvard Munch’s Head to Head (1905), for example. What begins as an intimate woodcut of two figures dissolves into an abstract swirl of shapes and colors, losing all traces of its original subject. In contrast, Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion (1886) retains its equine forms, breathing life into once-static images. Yet, Thomas Eakins’ The Wrestlers (1899) takes a darker turn, as the AI merges the entangled figures into a grotesque, amorphous blob of flesh—a digital Frankenstein that defies recognition.
The title Soft Jelly isn’t just a poetic choice; it’s a nod to Harlan Ellison’s chilling sci-fi story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, where a supercomputer transforms humanity into formless, sentient jelly. Similarly, the artworks in this iteration lose their individuality, blending into a single, pliable entity ready to be reshaped by the viewer. It’s a bold metaphor for the fluidity of identity in the age of AI—and a provocative question for the audience: Are we shaping technology, or is it reshaping us?
As you explore Diffuse Control, consider this: What happens when art becomes a conversation between human and machine? And who truly owns the final creation? Share your thoughts in the comments—this is one debate that’s just getting started.
