[CLOCK TICKING]
CECILIA VEGA: Drive 350 miles from the nation's capital
to McDowell County, West Virginia, where affordability
is the difference between buying groceries and heating a home.
Clean drinking water is hard to come by here.
A turn of the tap can look like this.
This shouldn't be the case anywhere in the world,
let alone in the wealthiest nation in the world.
[CLOCK TICKING]
ANDERSON COOPER: There is one group of refugees being
welcomed to the United States.
President Trump says white farmers from South Africa
are victims of a genocide.
These are burial sites right here.
Burial sites.
Over a thousand of white farmers.
ANDERSON COOPER: We went to South Africa
to see for ourselves.
It definitely wasn't a burial site.
Those crosses were there for less than 48 hours.
[CLOCK TICKING]
SHARYN ALFONSI: Refik Anadol invited us
inside this space at his LA studio.
Every image that surrounds us, Anadol
created using artificial intelligence.
So those are not real birds?
Nope.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Take it in.
Whoa.
A hypnotic flow of shapes and colors
that can make you feel like Alice in Wonderland
stumbled into Studio 54.
Is this a party trick?
REFIK ANADOL: I don't think so.
I feel like it's a new form of art.
[CLOCK TICKING]
I'm Lesley Stahl.
I'm Scott Pelley.
I'm Bill Whitaker.
I'm Anderson Cooper.
I'm Sharyn Alfonsi.
I'm Jon Wertheim.
I'm Cecilia Vega.
Those stories, and in our last minute,
a hockey great reflects on America's goals,
tonight on 60 Minutes.
[CLOCK TICKING]
For some, these are the boom times.
401(k)s are surging.
The stock market has hit an all-time high.
But drive just 350 miles from the nation's capital,
and the conversation isn't about how to get rich,
but how to survive.
McDowell County, West Virginia, was once the nation's largest
coal producer.
It is now one of the poorest places in the country, where
the food stamp program started and later the opioid crisis
took hold.
Today, one in three households there
depends on those food stamps.
And now the program that has fed families for decades
is facing the largest cuts in history.
We went to McDowell County last month
and learned that this is an all-too-familiar pattern.
Government help comes and goes.
Promises are made and broken, and the people are left behind.
McDowell County sits deep in the southern coalfields
of West Virginia, stretching more than 500 square miles
across the Appalachian Mountains.
There's just one traffic light and more churches
than we could count.
It's a place where clean drinking
water is hard to come by.
A turn of the tap can look like
I think if you would ask probably 9 out of 10 individuals
here, they would tell you that they feel very much forgotten.
CECILIA VEGA: By who?
Everybody.
The government, every institution
that you can think of.
So tell me about the congregation--
Pastor Brad Davis grew up in the coal fields
just over the county line and now leads congregations
at five United Methodist churches in McDowell.
He spends his days listening to those who trust God, each other,
and not much else.
I've heard directly people say, well,
why don't people just move?
And my response to that is, why should we?
Why should we have to move?
This is home.
BETTY STEPP: Now we're coming into Anawalt.
Home sweet home.
Home.
CECILIA VEGA: Betty Stepp has lived in the town of Anawalt
for all of her 76 years--
BETTY STEPP: There's Jackie.
Everybody honks at everybody?
--long enough to remember when there was still
a school, a theater, and a doctor.
If you run out of milk, you go to drive how far?
45 minutes.
Two mountains.
CECILIA VEGA: That's if you can afford a car.
Many here can't yet.
The only business left in town--
We'll be on our best behavior.
CECILIA VEGA: --Tom and Donald's mechanic shop.
BETTY STEPP: This is Tom.
Hi, how you doing?
This is Donald.
CECILIA VEGA: The famous Donald.
Donald and Tom are beloved by all the widows in this area.
[LAUGHTER]
CECILIA VEGA: A retired teacher's aide, Betty
and her husband live on a fixed income.
These days, everything feels expensive.
If I go to the grocery store, I
can't get out of there in less than $200.
And that's a week.
Sometimes it's $300.
Groceries are really high.
What have you had to cut back on in these times?
Beef for sure.
I cut back on chicken, vegetables.
CECILIA VEGA: She's not alone.
Across the country, families are feeling the squeeze.
Food prices are almost 20% higher today than in 2022.
I've heard a lot of folks from this community say,
if we don't help each other, no one's going to help us.
No one's going to come and save us.
We save each other.
CECILIA VEGA: Linda McKinney runs the county's largest food
bank--
You're allowed to come once a month.
CECILIA VEGA: --entirely on donations and volunteers.
Since the government shut down this past fall,
when Americans around the country
lost SNAP benefits or food stamps for weeks,
Linda says more new faces have been coming in.
Lately, we have a lot of young mothers that come,
and they'll say, I never thought I'd have to come.
And the children is what breaks my heart.
They didn't ask to be brought into this situation,
and they suffer daily.
CECILIA VEGA: Every weekend, more than 100 children
receive backpacks filled with food
so they have something to eat when they're not in school.
The thing that we're finding, we have parents that say, well,
my kid didn't get a snack bag.
And then you find out the child on Friday
is eating that food on the bus.
They're hungry.
They're so hungry, the food that's
supposed to last them through the weekend,
they're eating on the bus?
They're eating on the bus.
CECILIA VEGA: It's a tale of two economies.
At the White House, you'll hear about job growth and victory
over inflation.
We just had fantastic reports on inflation way down.
CECILIA VEGA: But in McDowell, the median household income is
about $30,000.
Affordability isn't a buzzword here.
It's the difference between buying groceries or paying
for heat.
In the 1940s, McDowell County was rich in coal jobs.
These mines powered America, helping
to build railroads and cities.
At its peak, nearly 100,000 people lived here,
earning some of the nation's highest hourly wages.
But as machines moved in, mining jobs dwindled,
and the local economy collapsed.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned for president here.
I think there are at least four or five things
the government can do.
CECILIA VEGA: The poverty he witnessed
led him to launch the modern food stamp program.
McDowell County residents were the first recipients.
Today in McDowell, there are fewer than a thousand coal jobs
left, and only 17,000 people remain.
We lack so much.
We lack jobs.
Just in the county alone, there is not enough jobs for everyone.
CECILIA VEGA: 26-year-old Tabitha Collins was
a stay-at-home mom until her fiancé was hit by a car
on the job last year and left disabled.
And how often are you here?
I'm here five days a week.
CECILIA VEGA: She works at a local nonprofit, Big Creek
People in Action, and is the sole income
earner for her family of six.
Along with caring for their toddler,
she's also helping to raise her fiancé's three younger siblings.
It's up to you to raise these kids in a decent manner
and try to teach them about the drug epidemic
and how it can affect others.
Because that's a lot of what we struggle with.
CECILIA VEGA: In a county ravaged by opioids,
it's a common story.
The epidemic claimed a generation of parents,
leaving family members like Tabitha
raising more children on less.
Even with food stamps, she often comes up short.
We still struggle food-wise.
I still have to take a lot out of my payday, which therefore
doesn't go towards bills.
And in the wintertime, our power is very high.
You're living paycheck to paycheck?
Yes.
And when you say the electrical bills were high,
how high are we talking?
In the month of December, my electrical bill was $480.
You got a shut-off notice?
We sure did.
It was scary.
I was trying to figure out which bill is more important.
And it comes down to that.
CECILIA VEGA: That choice is about to become more difficult.
SNAP and Medicaid benefits are facing the biggest
federal funding cuts in history, more than a trillion dollars
over the next decade, as a result
of President Trump's sweeping domestic policy
bill passed last year.
It will be up to states to pick up more of the costs,
and recipients will face stricter work requirements.
Tens of thousands of West Virginians
will likely lose benefits.
We rely on the benefits very much.
And it's not because we're taking
advantage of the government.
It's because we actually need these things.
I wonder if you think that that's what the perception is
that some people have.
I do, but I don't believe that.
A lot of us are working citizens,
and we're still barely making it by.
CECILIA VEGA: Outsiders are often
quick to assume this is Trump country,
but politics here defy easy labels.
For decades, McDowell voted blue,
backing Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in the 2016
presidential primary.
In the last three elections, President Trump
won the county, which had the lowest voter
participation in the state.
I think we as a community, collectively,
are so desperate to see some sort of change
that when someone comes along and says,
I'm going to make coal great again, we desperately cling
to that with a death grip.
And I think that goes a long way in explaining
why the political climate here has shifted the way it has.
To show our appreciation--
CECILIA VEGA: Earlier this month,
coal executives and miners handed President Trump a trophy,
declaring him the, quote, "undisputed champion
of beautiful clean coal" after his latest executive order aimed
at boosting the coal industry.
In McDowell, whether from the White House or the State House,
they've heard it all before.
What are the promises that have been made and not kept?
Economic resurgence, renaissance
of the coal industry, the elimination of poverty,
fixing our water systems.
Big promises.
Big promises, and nothing ever changes.
CECILIA VEGA: Nowhere is the failure
of government more clear than in the county's water supply,
which at times is not clear at all.
Few trust that it's safe enough to drink,
and angry residents have documented the black and brown
that oozes from aging pipes and contamination
left behind from the coal industry.
West Virginia's governor recently set aside $8.3 million
in federal funds to upgrade sewage and water lines
in McDowell, a drop in the bucket
compared to what county and state
officials say is still needed.
This is tap water.
CECILIA VEGA: When Pastor Brad isn't in church,
he's often pleading with politicians to do more.
You see this as a public health crisis.
BRAD DAVIS: Absolutely.
There are people in parts of this County
who haven't taken a hot shower in six years
or longer because the fumes from the water
makes them physically ill.
CECILIA VEGA: Reports of skin rashes and burns
are not uncommon.
Many families spend upwards of $150 a month for bottled water
on top of their water bills.
It's a luxury not everyone can afford.
So they fill up here at this old mine shaft shooting water
from the side of a mountain.
I think it's going to be hard for a lot of folks
to get their mind around that.
You've got American citizens getting a ride
to a spring on the side of the road
to bring a jug to fill up because that's
their only access to water.
And it should be hard for people
to wrap their minds around, because this
shouldn't be the case.
This shouldn't be the case anywhere in the world,
let alone in the wealthiest nation in the world.
CECILIA VEGA: To ease the burden,
Betty Stepp and other retirees, the youngest of whom is 70,
go door to door, delivering heavy cases of water
to neighbors.
I think our government needs to hear us.
We've worked our whole life here.
Why won't they help us?
Does it matter who's in charge?
It doesn't matter if it's Republicans or Democrats.
It doesn't matter.
CECILIA VEGA: In McDowell County,
people face two choices-- stay and scrape by, or scrape
together enough money to leave.
Tabitha Collins is staying.
You're 26 years old, and you're raising four kids.
That's a lot of responsibility.
TABITHA COLLINS: It's a lot.
I don't know how I get through it, but I do.
I just want to live the dream, like anyone else does-- have
a family, have a home, and not stress about the hardships
that we have around here.
Parishioners have told you that they feel like
they're tired of living in what feels like a third-world
country?
That's a direct quote.
What do you say to someone who says that to you?
Amen.
Because I'm tired of it, too.
It's gone on long enough.
[CLOCK TICKING]
In November, President Trump announced he would, quote,
"permanently pause migration from all third-world countries
to the US" after a member of the National Guard was killed
and another badly wounded in Washington,
allegedly by an Afghan refugee.
But there is one group of refugees
that Trump administration is welcoming.
It's expediting the resettlement of white South Africans, mostly
Afrikaners, who are descendants of Dutch settlers.
President Trump says that white farmers
are victims of a genocide.
The South African government disputes that.
We went to South Africa to see for ourselves.
In the rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal province
in the southeast of South Africa,
we met Darrell Brown, a seventh-generation rancher
and farmer.
Did you grow up knowing you would be a farmer?
It was always in my blood.
It's a calling.
ANDERSON COOPER: But that calling
has often come with risks.
10 years ago, his 82-year-old father was brutally attacked
on the farm by robbers looking for guns and money.
Then in 2020, Brown's friends Glen and Vida Rafferty
were murdered in a robbery on their farm nearby.
Your father was attacked.
You've had friends murdered.
Do you live in fear?
I certainly live carefully.
We're aware of what's happening around us.
We don't take silly chances.
ANDERSON COOPER: We came to Darrell Brown's farm
because of what President Trump said last May about the murders
of South African farmers.
It's a genocide that's taking place
that you people don't want to write about,
but it's a terrible thing that's taking place.
And farmers are being killed.
They happen to be white.
ANDERSON COOPER: Nine days later,
South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa,
came to the White House.
Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa
and has also made claims of genocide, was there too.
What happened next seemed to take Ramaphosa by surprise.
Excuse me, turn the lights down.
ANDERSON COOPER: President Trump showed several videos, proof,
the White House said, of the violence targeting
white farmers.
DONALD TRUMP: These are burial sites right here.
Burial sites.
Over a thousand of white farmers.
ANDERSON COOPER: We found the spot
where those white crosses were once planted.
It's a lonely pothole road not far from Darrell Brown's ranch.
It definitely wasn't a burial site.
Those crosses were there for less than 48 hours.
It was purely an avenue of crosses
that we planted there in honor of commercial farmers
in South Africa that had lost their lives.
ANDERSON COOPER: Brown knows about the crosses
because he put them there on the day of his friends
Glen and Vida Rafferty's funeral.
He keeps them locked in a shed.
In 2024, he brought them out again
for the funeral of his best friend, Tollie Nel, who
was also murdered on his farm.
Tony's wife, Rene, still lives there.
Her husband was killed in front of her,
trying to fight off burglars.
Her son, Theunis, was tied up while they stole cash and guns.
No one has been arrested.
My whole life has changed.
I've got nothing to look forward to.
Sorry.
ANDERSON COOPER: Theunis now runs the farm.
He carries a weapon with him almost all the time.
The only time I don't have it on me is when I'm in the shower.
Because I don't ever want another situation to arise where
I feel that I'm a victim.
ANDERSON COOPER: The Nels have hired private security guards
and fortified their property with electric fences
and cameras.
Many in South Africa feel they can't
rely on the country's ineffective and overwhelmed
police to keep them safe.
When you heard President Trump talk about a genocide,
what did you think?
Well, I just thought he was using the wrong word.
In your opinion, it's not a genocide here?
Not what I know as a genocide.
Not what I've heard of what a genocide is.
I see our attack as an opportunistic attack.
They knew there was money.
They knew there were firearms.
ANDERSON COOPER: Whites make up only about 7%
of the population of South Africa,
but still own 72% of all privately held agricultural land
and many of the country's large commercial farms.
But according to Wandile Sihlobo,
a leading agricultural economist,
the overwhelming number of farmers and those
working on farms are Black.
The white farmers may have a bigger part
of the proportion of income, but the vast majority
of people operating the farms in South Africa are Black.
There is crime on farms.
There are murders on farms.
They affect Black farmers as well as white farmers.
They affect Black farmers as well as white farmers
and also farm workers who are largely Black.
ANDERSON COOPER: Zuma farmed this 9-acre plot for 20 years.
He was used to having equipment stolen,
but in 2024, a group of men shot at him and broke into his house.
Did you think at the time they were going to kill you?
100% 100%.
ANDERSON COOPER: After the attack,
he decided to sell the farm.
There are a lot of Black farmers that are attacked,
and their voices are not out.
People don't pay attention.
It's just another number, another statistic.
ANDERSON COOPER: South Africa is one
of the most dangerous countries in the world.
The murder rate is seven times that of the United States,
and the majority of victims and perpetrators are Black.
According to police, more than 25,000 people were murdered here
in 2024.
It's estimated 37 of them were killed on farms.
37 out of 25,000.
For us as farmers, that 37 is too much.
ANDERSON COOPER: Johann Kotzé is an Afrikaner
who's head of South Africa's largest
agricultural organization.
It's actually not about white genocide.
It's about criminality in South Africa.
That's what's happening on farms.
It's what's happening in streets in Johannesburg
and other major cities.
It's crime.
The fact that it happened on a farm
doesn't make me special as a farmer.
It's horrendous.
Any murder is horrendous.
ANDERSON COOPER: South African police only
began publishing the race of those murdered on farms
under pressure last year.
In the first quarter of 2025, they
reported six farm homicides.
Five of the victims were Black.
Poverty is the biggest driver of crime in South Africa.
And how do you solve that?
ANDERSON COOPER: South Africa remains
one of the world's most economically unequal countries.
44% of Blacks here live in poverty,
compared to 1% of whites.
Kotzé went to Washington last February
to talk with administration officials
about the economic problems here.
He was surprised by what they focused on.
They ask us about the white genocide.
And the first thing I said is, I'm
as Afrikaans is what you can get.
I grew up Afrikaans, and I never witnessed that.
ANDERSON COOPER: South Africa's 2.7 million
Afrikaners descend from Dutch settlers who arrived
on the continent 400 years ago.
Every year they celebrate their culture and language
in the shadow of the Voortrekker monument,
which was built as a symbol of Afrikaner nationalism.
Millions of Black South Africans were forcibly evicted
from their land and lost their rights to it by law in 1913.
When Afrikaners took power in 1948,
they instituted apartheid, a brutal system
of racial segregation and discrimination.
Blacks had virtually no rights, and laws restricted
where they could live and work.
That all changed in 1994, when Black South Africans
were allowed to vote and elected Nelson Mandela.
God bless Africa.
ANDERSON COOPER: In the decades since, there has been progress--
a growing Black middle class and a reduction in poverty.
But some controversial government efforts
to redress inequalities have been
plagued by graft and cronyism.
We're here today to talk about South Africa.
ANDERSON COOPER: White supremacists in the US
and elsewhere have long portrayed Afrikaners
as victims of discrimination and, worse, genocide.
[THEME MUSIC]
But those claims didn't go mainstream until 2018,
when then Fox News host Tucker Carlson
began alleging Afrikaner farmers were being killed
and having their land seized.
An embattled minority of farmers,
mostly Afrikaans-speaking, is being targeted in a wave
of barbaric and horrifying murders.
ANDERSON COOPER: President Trump then tagged Tucker Carlson
in a tweet, saying there were "large scale killings
of farmers" in South Africa and the government was "now seizing
land from white farmers."
Are there large scale killings of farmers,
and is the government seizing land?
It is not happening.
Donald Trump was fed this information, this link-- farm
murders, genocide.
There is no such a thing.
ANDERSON COOPER: Max du Preez is a prominent Afrikaans journalist
and former newspaper editor.
Are you the victim of unjust discrimination?
I've never been discriminated against.
And I'm a loud-mouthed citizen because I'm a journalist,
so I express myself very strongly, also
against this inept, corrupt government.
ANDERSON COOPER: Discrimination is
outlawed under South Africa's constitution, which
also protects property rights and due process.
But in January last year, the South African parliament
approved a land expropriation act, which critics say
violates that constitution.
The government compares the expropriation act
to eminent domain in the United States,
which allows it to buy private land for public use.
What's different is that South Africa's expropriation act
could, in some cases, allow the government
to take land without compensation,
and not just for public use, but to redress past
passed discriminatory laws.
Landowners have the right to fight back in court,
but that might take years.
The expropriation act isn't in effect yet,
and it's being challenged in court
by South Africa's second largest political party
and by Kallie Kriel, the CEO of the Afrikaner rights group
AfriForum, who has repeatedly traveled
with others to Washington to lobby for support.
There is a serious threat to property rights.
There is a serious threat to the lives of farmers,
and that needs to be recognized.
Are white farmers being killed for their land?
Yes, I believe so.
Is there a white genocide going on in South Africa?
We've never used the term "white genocide."
We're saying there are tortures.
People are being murdered.
We are seeing a call for genocide.
JULIUS MALEMA: Shoot to kill.
ANDERSON COOPER: The call for genocide Kriel is talking about
is this song--
Kill the boer, the farmer.
ANDERSON COOPER: --"Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer,"
which President Trump played a video of in the Oval Office
in May.
In the 1980s and '90s, it was sung at protests against
apartheid and is still used at rallies by the man singing,
Julius Malema, a race-baiting opposition politician who wants
the government to seize white-owned land.
What the rhetoric is, is that we hear the same people that
chant "kill the boer, kill the farmer"
use the narratives to try and portray Afrikaners and farmers
as thieves.
Has any farmer had their land taken in the last 30
years of Black rule here in this country without compensation
or without having redress through courts?
Because the legislation did not allow it.
The new legislation allows it.
ANDERSON COOPER: President Trump cited the expropriation act
in his executive order last February,
cutting off all aid to South Africa and allowing
for "the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping
government-sponsored race-based discrimination."
The first group of 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in May.
Now almost 2,000 are here.
Did you ever imagine that virtually the only group
of refugees is going to be allowed in the US
would be white Afrikaners?
That shows up the complete absurdity
of this Afrikaner refugee thing.
Because they're saying these white Afrikaner refugees,
their lives are more important than the bona fide refugees
from everywhere else in the world that wants to come there.
They're saying white lives are worth more than other lives.
ANDERSON COOPER: Remember Darrell Brown,
the farmer who organized the protests with the white crosses?
He says he won't be packing his bags
to become a refugee in America anytime soon.
I'm an African.
I've been burnt by the African sun, and I'm not going anywhere.
There's a lot of sun in Florida.
I'm very positive about South Africa.
This is my home.
[CLOCK TICKING]
When you think about the way art is created,
you might imagine painters, photographers,
or sculptors immersed in their work at their studios.
But what about a person sitting in front of a computer screen,
using artificial intelligence and data to create visuals?
Is that art?
It's a question that is being asked and answered
by some of the most prestigious museums, critics, and auction
houses in the world.
Some artists call AI a revolutionary new medium.
Others call it theft.
We wanted to see it for ourselves.
So we went to Los Angeles to meet Refik Anadol.
The 40-year-old Turkish American artist is considered a pioneer
in the world of AI art.
If you're wondering what that world looks like,
grab your Dramamine.
This is--
Whoa.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Refik Anadol invited us
inside this space at his LA studio.
Every image that surrounds us, Anadol
created using artificial intelligence.
So those are not real birds?
No.
SHARYN ALFONSI: We'll get to exactly how he created it
in a moment.
But first, take it in.
Whoa.
A hypnotic flow of shapes and colors
that morph and evolve in the mirrors and LCD
screens that surround us.
It can make you feel like Alice in Wonderland
stumbled into Studio 54.
I will say this, you should not have a cocktail
before standing here, because--
All of this while a device around your neck
pumps out different AI-generated scents,
such as rain and flowers, to accompany what you're seeing.
Anadol says eventually another device will monitor
viewers' vital statistics, such as heartbeat,
and that data will be used to change the art in real time.
Is this a party trick?
REFIK ANADOL: I don't think so.
I feel like it's a new form of art.
Like we are discovering a new place
that we've never been before.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
SHARYN ALFONSI: If that all sounds a bit out there,
consider the planetary scale of Refik Anadol's work.
His massive, mind-bending images have
been stretched across the Sphere in Las Vegas,
the facade of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles,
and Antonio Gaudi's Casa Batlló in Barcelona.
When people ask you what you do, what do you say?
So I'm a media artist, and I'm using data and AI in my work.
So more than 16 years, I paint with a thinking brush.
What's a thinking brush?
I believe that information around us, data around us,
have its own voice.
But like painting, drawing the things we traditionally think
of, sculpting, do you do any of those things?
I think in my mind's eye.
So technically, I may not draw well, but in my mind's eye,
I can compute.
I can imagine geometrically what exactly the mind's eye
is looking for.
SHARYN ALFONSI: To create art, Anadol uses data, lots of it.
For this piece, he used 200 million photos of Earth.
Data from NASA was the driving force behind these exhibits.
When I think about data as a pigment,
I think it doesn't need to dry.
It can move in any shape, in any form, any color and texture.
It sounds a little trippy.
It is trippy because I think as artists
we ask what is beyond reality.
We can connect this one to another one.
SHARYN ALFONSI: To show us how he does that, Anadol
grabbed a gaming controller.
So we are in this new algorithm
that I am literally controlling the whole system.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Anadol all says his team curated
153 million images for a piece on California landscapes.
We are flying in our data set of nature.
OK.
So in this archive we have flora, fauna.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Each image is converted
into a series of data points that
represents its characteristics, such as color, texture,
and shape.
They are then plotted into multidimensional space.
That data is what the AI learns from.
So when it receives a prompt, it can create its own, new version,
images Anadol says only, quote, "exist in the mind
of a machine."
This isn't a real place?
This is not.
This is an AI dreaming this world.
And now we are reshaping this world together.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Anadol then applies special algorithms
to blend and make the images into his signature fluid style.
Are you a computer programmer, or are you an artist?
I am an artist, but I love computers.
But now with AI, I feel like I have now programmed it in a way
that I never imagined before.
How much of this is driven by you and how much by the machine?
So this is a great question, because I
try my very best last 10 years to make a 50% machine,
50% human.
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SHARYN ALFONSI: Treating AI as a co-creator
has made Refik Anadol a darling of the tech world.
He's teamed up with Google, MIT, and Microsoft
to create large public installations.
Let's start the bidding here.
SHARYN ALFONSI: He's been embraced
by some in the art world--
Sold at one million, one--
SHARYN ALFONSI: --selling his pieces
for upwards of a million dollars at auction.
His work has been exhibited at museums around the world.
And in 2022, the Museum of Modern Art in New York
commissioned this piece.
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
A colossal 24-foot-high installation that filled
the MoMA lobby, called Unsupervised.
How did the public react to Unsupervised
when they came in and saw it?
It was a utter extraordinary hit.
People sat in front of it for hours, literally transfixed
by what they were seeing.
It's an amazing painting.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Glenn Lowry was the director
of the MoMA for three decades.
He retired in September.
To create Unsupervised, Lowry told
us Refik Anadol trained an AI system
on the publicly available metadata of the entire MoMA
collection.
Think of metadata as the digital DNA of each piece.
It describes and identifies the art.
Anadol used MoMA's metadata to reimagine 200 years of art.
He wrote some algorithms that allowed the data from one
object to evolve into the data of another object
to become yet a third object or a fourth object
never before seen.
And I think people found it deeply satisfying.
It's one of the most popular images in the collection.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Studies have found that, typically,
museum visitors spend about 28 seconds looking
at great works of art.
For Unsupervised, Anadol says it was 38 minutes.
But not everyone was quite so enamored.
It's like a giant lava lamp that you
can't take your eyes off of.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Jerry Saltz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning art
critic for New York Magazine.
It's like an Etch A Sketch.
SHARYN ALFONSI: He called Unsupervised
a half-million-dollar screensaver.
--splashing into--
SHARYN ALFONSI: When people came in and they looked at this,
they looked at it for 38 minutes.
Isn't that the sign of success?
Popularity is not the sign of success.
How long you spend with a work of art
is not a sign of success, so much as your willingness
to get quiet within yourself, go to uncomfortable places,
become comfortable in those places,
asking yourself questions.
In front of a Refid Adanol, you sit down, go into a stupor,
and you don't have to think much.
You go, oh, there goes a painting that
looks a little like Renoir, morphing
into one that looks like Picasso,
morphing into an amoeba.
It's something to look at.
Is it art?
AI is art.
AI will be art.
SHARYN ALFONSI: But Saltz says AI has a long way to go.
AI is one-day-old.
And we're already having conversations.
I hate it.
You love it.
It's good.
It's bad.
It's new.
It's young.
Most of what you see in AI, Sharyn, is crap.
Crap?
90% crap.
But 90% of the art made during the Renaissance was also crap.
Things take time.
I think one has to recognize that works of art that
challenge you are always going to be misunderstood
by many at first.
SHARYN ALFONSI: MoMa's Glenn Lowry
says the skepticism around AI mirrors the reaction
to the advent of photography 200 years ago.
When suddenly the human hand is
removed from the making of an image, what does that mean?
And I think artificial intelligence
is analogous to that.
But I don't think you can stop technology.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Molly Crabapple is a New York-based artist
and author.
She does not think I should be welcomed into the art world.
You've called this the greatest art heist in history.
Yes.
Why?
Well, when we talk about art heist,
typically we're talking about one painting being taken
from a museum, two, three.
They stole billions and billions of images.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Crabapple says museums, galleries,
and auction houses shouldn't buy or display
AI art trained on other artists' work without their consent.
She calls the popular AI generators
like this, which let users type in a prompt to create
striking, sometimes surreal images, corporate plagiarism
bots.
She says they're trained on art scraped from the web,
including hers.
This is an illustration Crabapple did of Aleppo, Syria.
When we asked an AI image generator
to create a drawing of a Syrian skyline
in the style of Molly Crabapple, it made this in seconds.
Strikingly similar.
Did anyone ever ask you, hey, can we feed your images
into this system?
Certainly not.
No artist has been asked for their consent.
No artist has received compensation.
In fact, we don't even see credit.
SHARYN ALFONSI: The AI companies have told lawmakers
that what they're doing falls under fair use, a legal doctrine
which allows copyrighted works to be used without permission
under certain circumstances.
They claim AI is studying and learning,
just like a human would.
But a group of artists has filed a class-action lawsuit
against four of the AI companies that
make art generators, accusing them of copyright infringement,
among other things.
There are some artists that have called using these images theft.
REFIK ANADOL: Mhm.
What do you say to that?
I completely agree all my artist friends.
I know what they mean, and as an artist, I only use my own data.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Refik Anadol told us since 2020,
he's only worked with what he calls ethically sourced data
sets.
What do you mean by that?
So this is the most important part of art making with AI.
It takes a lot of teamwork, a lot of thinking, research.
We always start with permission.
SHARYN ALFONSI: Yeah
Then we know exactly where information comes from.
How long has this been in the works?
Now, Anadol is building a 20,000-squares-foot museum
dedicated to AI arts in downtown Los Angeles, called DATALAND--
How big will the screens be in here?
--a massive Canvas to celebrate his optimism about technology.
Anadol insists AI is not a threat,
but a tool to create art no human could create alone.
There are some people that say AI can never truly create art
because it lacks emotion, it lacks lived experience,
and it lacks intent.
Yes.
These are all, I think, true.
That's why I believe human-machine collaboration.
We are really completing that bridge
where I feel like most likely where we are going as humanity,
and just be sure that it's done right and it's shared right
and celebrate this new age of imagination.
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ANNOUNCER: Get immersed in Anadol's AI work
and decide for yourself, Is it art?
at 60minutesovertime.com.
ANNOUNCER: The Last Minute of 60 Minutes
is sponsored by UnitedHealthcare,
coverage you can count on for your whole life ahead.
Mike Eruzione delivered one of the greatest upsets
in American sports history.
As captain of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team,
Eruzione led a squad of amateurs against the mighty Soviet Union
and scored the game-winning goal.
We asked him to reflect on the lesson of that miracle on ice 46
years ago today.
I think the lesson that our team showed in 1980 by winning
an Olympic gold medal, by beating the Soviets a team
that nobody in the world thought we could beat,
is a great example of what makes our country so great.
Herb Brooks, our coach, called us a lunch pail,
hard hat group of guys, guys who came
to work every single day, rolled up our sleeves,
striving to be the best that we could be.
And I think when you look back on 250 years in our country,
you've seen moments like that where, despite the challenges,
despite the fact that nobody thinks we can achieve something,
you find a way to do it.
In 1980, we were looking for something to feel good about,
and it happened to be us.
It happened to be our team.
And people related to that.
People come up to me to this day, and they'll say,
I remember where I was when we won.
And I always go, we?
I didn't know you were on the team.
But that's what that moment meant.
If you believe in something and you're willing to work for it,
you can accomplish it, and our team exemplified that.
I'm Cecilia Vega.
We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.
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