‘A betrayal’: Winnipeg’s Pride festival logo is ruffling some feathers

Pride Winnipeg has apologized after admitting to using AI to create the logo and posters for this year’s event. Michelle Gerwing has more.

This year the Pride Winnipeg Festival theme is “Rise in Pride, Stand in Strength.”

But a new logo featuring a rainbow phoenix rising from flames, which was made using AI, has some Winnipeggers infuriated.

“It does really seem like a betrayal that they would then turn to AI, especially in the queer community, which is just full of a proliferation of very talented artists,” said Sam Beiko, the artistic director for Prairie Comics Festival.

Earlier this week Beiko said she learned this image and a few other pride event posters were made using artificial intelligence.

She said it was people in the community who noticed it first and called Pride out.

“It snowballed from there and we just watched the discourse, and Pride themselves did admit to using it,” said Beiko.

Pride Winnipeg declined an interview with CTV News Winnipeg, but an apology for using AI was posted online.

It explained the festival logo was made by a volunteer who used AI as a place to start from.

Pride Winnipeg said in the apology that it’ll pay local artists in the future.

“We are committed to do better as an organization,” the post read.

“It doesn’t really feel genuine at this point,” said Beiko, who added her event is volunteer-run and makes sure to always pay local artists for original work for marketing materials.

“Art is something that speaks to human experience and using AI art is just co-opting the human experience so you can skip the work.”

She said seeing AI used more often to generate all kinds of art, not just by Pride, is deeply frustrating.

“When I see my friends and loved ones using AI, it says to me that they don’t actually care about my work (and are) going to feed an enormous blender that’s not only destroying my career but destroying the planet that we live on.”

Beiko added her organization won’t be supporting Pride Winnipeg this year and has found another LGBTQ2S+ group to celebrate Pride Week with instead.