The 5.6m Boy Walking sculpture has been a Potters Park spectacle for the past six years. Photo / Google Maps
The 5.6m Boy Walking sculpture has been a Potters Park spectacle for the past six years. Photo / Google Maps
A Tāmaki Makaurau art piece has been censored by Google and Apple, drawing attention to the “unintended consequences” of AI automation.
Better known as the “Dominion Road Boy”, Ronnie van Hout’s Boy Walking was erected in Potters Park in 2019, quickly becoming an iconic local landmark.
The sculpture’s facehas now been blurred on Google and Apple Maps, a practice typically applied to humans who are featured in the applications’ street-view shots to protect their privacy.
Technology commentator and Gorilla Technology founder Paul Spain told Stuff the change “highlights the shortcomings of technology like AI”.
He suspects the censoring was a computerised choice rather than deliberately done.
“For something like this, it doesn’t necessarily matter, but sometimes the unintended consequences can be more inappropriate,” he said.
“We apply these things and we don’t necessarily understand as a society sometimes what the consequences might be.”
Auckland Transport estimates 32,000 Aucklanders commute along Dominion Rd a day, passing the art piece Boy Walking.
When approached for comment, Google did not elaborate on the recent change but provided some more context on the company’s privacy procedure, which automatically blurs faces and licence plates in Street View visuals.
Boy Walking is likely to remain faceless as Google says facial obscurement decisions are permanent.
Situated at the corner of Dominion Rd and Balmoral Rd, the public art piece is seen by an estimated 32,000 Kiwis a day as they pass through the intersection on the way to work and school.
It has become infamous in the past six years and even inspired a hate account followed by nearly 4000 Instagram users.
At the time of its unveiling, van Hout said the 5.6m Boy Walking was intended to represent the local community.
“In literal terms, this is an 11 or 12-year-old child, but it could be anyone,” he said.
“We’re all constantly becoming. We’re always learning. Always moving forward.”
Described by arts writer Charlotte Huddleston as “the joker in New Zealand contemporary art”, van Hout’s work tends towards the weird and wacky.
His sculpture Quasi, a rendering of a hand imprinted with his own face, was reviled by Wellingtonians when it was installed above the City Gallery in 2019.
But the Kiwi artist was unphased, telling the Guardian last year he considered the controversial work a success.
“People had strong views about it and I guess that’s probably the essence of art – being open to everybody’s different interpretations and the love and the hate that people had for it.”
