Blue Bottle Coffee partners with a viral artist to make a point about the pour-over method

As technological advances have throughout history, the emergence of artificial intelligence has been met with both enthusiasm and dread, the double-edged sword that it could elevate society...or destroy it.

Now Blue Bottle Coffee, the chain known for its very particular pour-over method, is entering the fray, with a challenge that will pit a popular artist against AI to make a work of art.

Devon Rodriguez is among the most followed visual artists in the world, with 32.8 million followers on TikTok and 7.4 million fans on Instagram.

He’s most famous for videos where he surreptitiously paints or draws fellow passengers on the New York subway, then surprises them by presenting them with their portraits.

In a scenario reminiscent of the John Henry legend of a railway laborer taking on a steam drill, on October 25 Rodriguez will appear at a gallery in New York. He’ll be given a prompt to make a painting along a certain subject or theme, and at the same time, the prompt will be given to a Shutterstock AI image generator.

While the AI image will of course be generated in an instant, Rodriguez will be separated by a divider and not see it. Spectators, though, will see side-by-side projections on the wall of both the AI image and the artist’s canvas as he progresses on his paintin

Pour favor: Poring over what AI could possibly have to do with coffee? The answer, albeit homonymously, is just that: pouring over. Blue Bottle and others committed to the method shudder at the prospect of brewing in a drip coffeemaker.

“So I’m really into pour-over coffee,” Rodriguez explained in an Instagram video he posted on October 19. “There’s a deeper flavor that you don’t get from a machine. It’s the same way that I feel with art and AI. You don’t get that deeper emotion, that humanity, and that’s what I want to convey at “The Human Generated Art Experiment,” where I’m partnering with Blue Bottle to explore the value of handcrafted art in the age of AI.”

“The Human Generated Art Experiment” is open to the public, and will be held in the Chelsea neighborhood at 502 West 22nd Street, from 10am to 6pm. Both humans and robots that look uncannily like them are welcome.