Will 2024 mark the year AI art went mainstream? Each year, the Frieze London Artist Award gives its winner the chance to debut an ambitious commission at the fair. This time, the spotlight was on Lawrence Lek. His playable game and hard-hitting video – though at five minutes, too long for the fleeting attention spans of most fairgoers – follows the absurdist story of an AI 'carebot' who wrestles with an uncanny kind of human self-doubt.
Ben Luke, host of The Art Newspaper’s podcasts and former Standard critic, describes Lek as "neither a blind evangelist nor a sceptic" of new technologies. It’s fitting, then, that his installation leaves you lingering somewhere between fascination and fear.
