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Arts & Communication AI in teacher education and critical thinking

Table 1. Key differentiating aspects of AI‑created images
Aspect Fictitious recreation Deepfake
Purpose To create something new or fictitious without cheating To imitate reality, often with an intent to deceive
Method Generation of imaginary content from scratch Modification of real content using AI
Level of realism Can be realistic or deliberately unrealistic Seeks to be indistinguishable from reality
Common applications Art, film, education, science, design Fraud, disinformation, cinema
Abbreviation: AI: Artificial intelligence.

exhibition at the St. Petersburg Museum, where visitors been generated with AI, which converts the cartoon into
had an AI-enabled experience with the artist and took a an approximate representation of what they would be like.
selfie with him. Since then, this trend has been mimicked A recent example is the famous cartoon The Simpsons,
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by other musical legends such as Roy Orbison, Whitney which has been converted into human characters by AI
Houston, and Amy Winehouse. 18 with an essence that perfectly reminds us of the yellow
characters of the series, but this time with a human
In the field of advertising, we can see notable cases of
advertisements with a recreation, such as that of Lola Flores appearance (Figure 1C). In this regard, Marín-Viadel et al.
pointed out that: “The images created by the AI from its
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selling a brand of beer in 2021. Palomo-Domínguez learning with Goya are, first, surprising. For professionals
highlights the rapid diffusion of this proposal through teaching drawing to their students, the first three
various digital news media, provoking astonishment in sensations with AI are speed, wide dispersion of the quality
its viewers. Despite being aware of its artificiality, many of the results, and remarkable stylistic congruence with
struggle to distinguish that it is not the actual artist the drawings used as models.” 5, p. 335 They highlighted what
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speaking, further adding to the mystique surrounding it. Virilio advanced with the locomotive illusion of digital
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Another example would be the television commercial of images, something that AI has made its own to almost
Mexican actor “Cantinflas” promoting a supermarket chain automatically transform the reality of things and images.
where he promotes his Mexican heritage. These types of
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recreations can be explored from an artistic perspective, In terms of history, the recreation or transposition of
as a form of creative expression or as a tool to question different historical characters from previous images is
authenticity and reality. alluded to and concretized, such as the reconstruction of
the Roman emperors, for example, Augustus and Maximian
In the field of art, AI opens creative horizons by allowing the Thracian, by Voshart, through AI (Figure 2). Likewise,
the exploration of combinations of styles and concepts Panagiotis Constantinou’s recreation of all emperors
that are difficult for a human to imagine, thus expanding through AI was published on X (formerly known as
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the traditional boundaries of art. Moreover, its versatility Twitter).
makes it applicable in industries as diverse as architecture,
fashion, or the design of virtual worlds. Some websites and tools allow us to interact with
historical characters through AI to help us better
Another relevant aspect is the ability to distinguish understand historical events. On the other hand, it can
between objective facts and subjective visual representations. distort the idea we have of the events, affecting our sense of
AI-generated images, being able to represent alternative history. However, it can be a very interesting educational
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worlds or stylized versions of reality, promote an analysis tool to use with a positive function to give them access to
that goes beyond simple observation. It is necessary to realistic-looking images. The podcast Panorama has used
understand that these images may be more influenced AI to create a short documentary film called Atlantis,
by imagination or technical criteria than by a faithful Hidden Treasure (Figure 3), which has also been used to
representation of reality. Reflecting on how AI-generated reveal data about the possible location of Atlantis.
images can influence users’ perception and interpretation
Marín-Viadel et al. point out that “the speed of creation
is an essential part of developing critical thinking in the of new drawings is only comparable to the speed with
digital age.
which we can produce photographs with an automatic
Literature shows the AI-generated image of characters machine. But now, we are not dealing with photographs
such as The Little Prince (Figure 1A) from the novel by but with drawings, or to put it more appropriately, with
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Other characters from the digital images that reproduce very well the appearance
Walt Disney factory, such as the classic Mickey Mouse of drawings, before which we cannot help but remember
(Figure 1B), or characters from the Shrek movie have the time it takes to execute each stroke or each freehand

Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 4 doi: 10.36922/ac.5047