The Arts Council, Culture Night, Galway City Council Arts Office, and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, have funded and promoted generative AI in this year’s programme, and Galway-themed news site This is Galway has promoted it. 8 Bits of Galway under the name Serhii Khadzhava has clearly used generative AI in this “project”, even to the point that Instagram automatically tagged it as such on This is Galway’s social post. I have obscured the image above because I don’t want to pollute your beautiful brains with this degenerative slop. Below are several updates from The Arts Council/Culture Night. You can skip to the initial complaint here.
UPDATE 12/10/26
I’ve received further communication from The Arts Council. Bold added by me:
Dear Alan [sic],
Thank you for your email received on 30th September. I hope I will provide further clarity to you relating to your correspondence around Culture Night processes and events and the use of AI.
In relation to Culture Night participation, the Arts Council’s criteria are applied fairly and consistently to all participating organisations. These criteria include that events are free to attend, open to the public, registered through the relevant local authority, and demonstrate a cultural, heritage, educational, community or discovery element.
Culture Night has developed as a truly democratic occasion; events are created by groups and organisations locally, who register their event with their relevant local authority, who in turn ensure the above criteria is applied. Details on each event are then uploaded to the Culture Night website. It means that essentially, event organisers’ themselves decide what demonstrates a cultural, heritage, educational, community, or discovery element.
We are committed to leading an inclusive nationwide event that reflects the breadth of cultural interests and communities across the island. We review annually and are always keen to develop what has become a wonderful nationwide event. In the coming weeks and months, we will review this year’s iteration and plan for Culture Night 2027. As part of that, we will review the criteria for participating organisations.
With regards,
Tina Leonard
Director of Communications
My reply as follows:
Dear Tina,
I’m delighted to hear The Arts Council is planning a review of the criteria for participating organisations. I would like to see the use of generative AI in Culture Night literature, websites, events, and works being explicitly discussed in this context, and I think it is advisable to put together a panel of artists to this end, especially artists who’ve been directly affected by generative AI use this year. For example Trea Ivory, an artist in Longford, had to withdraw her work after it had been deliberately replaced with generative AI in the programme and websites. Several other individuals had their work or practice misrepresented through generative AI imagery.
The Arts Council and Culture Night need to acknowledge the actual harm and potential for harm in the absence of a binding policy around generative AI use, and seek feedback from those affected. What is the point of a celebration of culture on this island if the practitioners of that culture are being harmed?
Yours Sincerely,
Allan Cavanagh
UPDATE 30/09/26
The Arts Council have written to me using a similar boilerplate response as Culture Night below.
Dear Allan
Thank you for your emails of 19 September.
Culture Night is a national event taking place right across Ireland. The Arts Council has a stewardship role, with regional programmes managed by local authorities across Ireland.
Our responsibility is to apply criteria for participation in Culture Night fairly and consistently to all participating organisations, while also respecting the rights of others to express any concerns about specific events.
We are committed to leading an inclusive nationwide event that reflects the breadth of cultural interests and communities across the island. This year, a record number of over 1,940 free events will take place as part of Culture Night and across RTÉ broadcasts, and we anticipate over 1 million people engaging with the programme.
Kind regards,
Tina Leonard
Director of Communications
The Arts Council
To which I have replied:
This is a boilerplate response that does not address my concerns at all. The Arts Council is washing its hands of the quantifiable harm that the inclusion of generative AI in a celebration of Irish arts and culture has. I have peers with previously healthy illustration careers now driving delivery vans instead. That’s the tangible reality the Arts Council is ignoring by normalising and therefore encouraging the use of generative AI imagery with its unquestioned and unexamined inclusion in official events.
You are setting fire to illustration careers right now by not taking these concerns seriously. For a funding and development body for the arts not to take this seriously is simply complicity, and one would wonder at that complicity’s relationship with the state’s promotion of AI tech companies at large.
Yours Sincerely,
Allan Cavanagh
Below is the interaction I had on Instagram with the “artist”:
Text of screenshot:
allanartist 5d • Edited
Why are you presenting a “project” that’s clearly generative Al in Galway for Culture Night?
sergeykhadjava 38m • Author
@allanartist Who told you that? And why can’t Al tools be used for a “project”?
allanartist 30m
@sergeykhadjava your 8 bit Galway listing for Culture Night has an Al image. Clearly Al “tools” can be used for a project, the moral question is should they be.
sergeykhadjava 8m • Author
@allanartist Would you like to join and O create an illustration for the project cover?
allanartist 6s
@sergeykhadjava no, but maybe you could ask one of the increasing number of formerly full-time cartoonists and illustrators in Ireland who’ve had to find other work because gen Al use has killed the market for images?
UPDATE 10/09/26
Boilerplate response from Culture Night:
Hi Allan,
Thank you for your email. We note your complaint about an event programmed as part of Culture Night 2026.
Culture Night is stewarded by the Arts Council, with regional programmes managed by local authorities across Ireland.
An underlying principle guiding the work of the Arts Council is freedom of thought and expression. It does not have a point of view on, or seek to influence, the content of programming or activity undertaken by artists and organisations.
If you would like to contact the Arts Council directly, you can do so by emailing appealsandcomplaints@artscouncil.ie.
Best wishes ,
The Culture Night Team
From the programme: “8 Bits of Galway forms part of the Arts Council’s Culture Night Late and the Galway City Night-Time Economy Programme funded by Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, with support from the Galway City Council Night-Time Economy and Arts Office.”
Below is the text of an email I’ve sent to the above bodies.
I want to complain in the strongest possible terms about the inclusion of generative AI in Culture Night’s programme, specifically 8 Bits of Galway under the name Serhii Khadzhava. Culture Night is tacitly endorsing the destruction of artists’ livelihoods by promoting generative AI. The only art involved in this is the work of genuine artists that has been consumed and regurgitated by data sets created by immense companies for whom copyright law simply doesn’t exist. Culture Night is giving full-throated support to the theft of artistic works that are then returned in plagiarised, statistically generated approximations of images.
Many of my peers are now closing down their creative practices because of the desolation generative AI has created in the market of images. To see a state body not only promote, but FUND this process, is official dissonance of the highest order.
This event should be withdrawn from the programme and safeguards put in place so similar “projects” derived from the literal endings of creative careers do not pass the printing press again.
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Hi Linda, yep those are two shared emotions alright!
This is completing discouraging to see, and the response from the funding bodies is infuriating.