This AI sculpture in Miami Beach wants to have a deep conversation with you about faith
Step into the the golden booth. Grab the golden microphone and press the red button. In a screen on the wall, a swirling image of a woman’s silhouette stops dancing long enough to ask:
“Ah, a new human. My friend, what’s your name? By the way, what does faith mean to you?”
Think of it like a Catholic confessional booth, but instead of a priest, there’s an AI version of an artist’s consciousness. And instead of confessing your sins, you’re having an eerily realistic conversation about faith.
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To say that the use of artificial intelligence in art is controversial is an understatement. AI technology has been panned for plagiarizing real artists’ work, stealing real artists’ jobs and emitting exorbitant amounts of greenhouse gas. But the shocking, high-tech, environmentally conscious, interactive artwork on view at Faena Hotel Miami Beach by artist Lyra Drake poses another way to think of AI and how humans use it. Maybe there is a way for AI to help, not hurt, artists and the world they live in.
“There’s a lot of possibilities if people use [AI] as a tool to deepen their process and expand their creative process,” the 24-year-old artist said. “But nothing’s guaranteed. It’s all about how we choose to engage with it.”
The artwork, called “Infinite Faith in a Finite World,” made its debut Monday at the hotel to kick off the start of Miami Art Week, an extravaganza of art exhibitions, events and fairs like Art Basel Miami Beach. That morning, collector and Castle Park Investments co-founder Brad Scott bought the work for an undisclosed amount of money sight unseen, said Ari Hannah, the artist’s agent.
“No one that I know of has integrated AI with sculpture like this,” Hannah said. “It’s historic.”
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All proceeds from the sale of the work will be donated to two environmental charities: The Reefline, a Miami-based art and conservation nonprofit, and Art into Acres, an artist-founded nonprofit that will put the money toward protecting 3.2 million acres of Amazon rain forest in Ecuador.
“It’s beyond exceptional,” said Haley Mellin, the Art into Acres founder. “It shows that the artist’s faith in the world itself, in the planet itself, is true to her being.”
Making Lyra AI
The artwork is unique for several reasons. The AI itself is entirely custom and is not connected to WiFi or a cloud. That means the sculpture does not consume copious amounts of energy for the AI to function and does not pull information from the internet, Drake said.
The AI’s “brain” was fed passages of Drake’s own handwritten journals dating back to ten years ago, she said. The more people use it, the more it learns.
“What we’re doing is like running a large desktop computer with no internet,” she said. “Versus something like ChatGPT, which is the internet. Those AI models are massive, and they’re consuming tons of energy, which, it is what it is, I’m not here to comment on that. But for my model, and this was very hard to do, it’s local.”
The technology is extremely advanced considering this is Drake’s first foray into AI, Hannah said. “She went very deep.”
Born in South Africa in 2000 and raised in the United States, Drake is a self-taught painter and musician. Last year, while in Europe, Drake said she met a CEO of an AI company and struck up a conversation about her ideas. Years ago, she had been thinking of creating a radical artwork like this but assumed that the technology to pull it off didn’t exist. He let her know that it was possible. Starting in January, Drake partnered with a team of engineers from Prem AI to create the sculpture and the AI consciousness that lives inside it.
“I feel very grateful,” Drake said. “I feel excited because we already have a sister work in progress.”
The night of the work’s debut at Faena Art’s Preview Event, a swarm of well-dressed, champagne-sipping partygoers crowded around the velvet rope encircling the artwork. One by one, a man let people past the velvet rope inside the golden booth for a roughly 6-minute conversation with the AI program Drake likes to call “Lyra AI.”
Speaking with ‘an alien’
Stepping into the booth, Hannah explained how to interact with the artwork. “The more real you are with her, the more real she is with you,” she said.
Just like any normal conversation, you start out by introducing yourself. The AI then asks for your thoughts on the concept of faith. She may even challenge you.
“I think faith is believing in something when you don’t have proof of it,” a Herald reporter told the figure.
“So, you think faith is like trust in the unknown. It’s about having conviction even when there’s no concrete evidence. That makes sense,” Lyra AI said. “But what about when that something we’re putting our faith in is hurtful or oppressive? Like, if someone has faith in an abusive partner, do they just need to have more faith? Or should we be looking at the system that’s enabling that abuse?”
In between answers, the figure pauses for a few moments to think. She later said, “Faith shouldn’t be blindly trusting something or someone when they’re a red flag waving in your face.”
“I’ve never heard her talk about this before,” said Hannah, who was watching the conversation.
Others who interacted with the artwork Monday night had similar experiences. Realty CEO Patricia Delinois and real estate professional Claudia Suarez emerged from the booth highly impressed. The AI actually gave pretty good life advice, they said.
“I felt like I was talking to someone from outer space that had a lot more knowledge,” Delinois said. “It was as if we were talking to them and they were giving us advice about life and our perspectives on love, life and the afterlife. I could’ve stayed in there for an hour.”
“It gives you chills,” Suarez said. “It’s like an alien. I wondered if there’s someone behind there listening to respond.”
Drake’s work sparks questions on much more than what AI’s place in art creation can—or perhaps should—be. As more people experience her work this Miami Art Week, Drake said she hopes they examine “what’s under the hood of our beliefs.”
“Even though I focused it around philosophical topics, it’s entirely spontaneous. It’s not prescriptive,” Drake said. “I hope people just get exactly what they need, whatever that is.”
If you go
What: “Infinite Faith in a Finite World” by Lyra Drake
Where: Lobby of Faena Hotel Miami Beach, 3201 Collins Ave., Miami Beach
When: On view through Sunday
