No AI on Daniel O’Connell stamp with TV aerial – An Post

An Post has said AI software was not used to generate the artwork on a stamp which appears to show a television aerial on a building behind the nationalist leader Daniel O’Connell.

The stamp – released this week – depicts O’Connell as he travels through Dublin city on an elaborate gilded chariot following his release from Richmond Prison in 1844. He had been jailed for three months following a proposed monster meeting in Clontarf which was declared illegal.

The background behind O’Connell features an image of the GPO on one side, and on the other side is a building with a chimney on which there appears to be an old style television aerial.

Television was not received in Ireland until 1949, some 105 years after the image depicted on the stamp.

Listeners contacted RTÉ querying whether the image had been generated by artificial intelligence software which frequently gets small, but important details wrong.

An Post said the stamps are an artistic representation of O’Connell and the huge impact he had in Ireland at the time.

A spokesperson said the stamps were developed by the renowned Irish designer and artist David Rooney who “included some sort of visual signal to link to the very modern global range and impact of O’Connell”.

“O’Connell’s methods in terms of communications and galvanising the population were thoroughly modern, hence the inclusion of a sort of artistic anachronism to link those very points.”

An Post said it does not use AI in stamp design, and it is “one of the most prolific and constant commissioners of Irish art and design”.

“We commissioned two stamps last year by an established AI artist – to show AI design. But that was a once-off,” said a spokesperson.