Vienna has more than 100 museums. The Vienna Tourist Board uses artificial intelligence to create derivatives of beloved felines – cats – of classic Austrian works of art as part of a campaign to encourage tourists to visit the Austrian capital and “see the art behind AI art”.

In Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss (1907-08), the figures are replaced in the more recent UnArtificial Art campaign with fluffy, adorable creatures; a cat occupies Egon Schiele’s 1912 self-portrait, and cats abound in his “Tower of Babel” Pieter Bruegel the Elder (ca. 1563). “The campaign aims to show that AI art is only possible because an algorithm uses as a reference real works made by real people, and the prototypes can only be seen in Vienna.

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The stream of Viennese modernism that revolutionized the art world over a century ago continues to be alive and influencing art today through algorithms that direct AI creations,” said Norbert Kettner, CEO of the Vienna Tourist Board.

Alongside this lighter side of the campaign, the Vienna Tourist Board chose art historian Markus Hübl to educate about Viennese art and delve into the intersection of AI art and art history, in a short film