Why AI Hallucinates Like a Renaissance Painter

Oct 27, 2026  

This article was originally published on LinkedIn on 31 July 2026.

Icon: a Renaissance arched portrait frame with a noble bust dissolving into AI network nodes

Recently my family took a trip to Florence, Italy and visited the Uffizi Gallery where some of the world’s greatest art can be admired.

We were looking at one particular portrait and my wife said to me, she was beautiful wasn’t she? I asked “was she”? Not because the portrait didn’t show a beautiful woman, it did. But because that portrait was an interpretation of what the artist saw in front of him and what people expected of a noble man’s wife to look like. Did the artist interpret the portrait based on what he saw in front of him or dare I say it did he hallucinate?