LOS ANGELES — A new museum in downtown Los Angeles is giving artificial intelligence a central role in the American contemporary art scene, combining digital technology, sound, data and immersive installations.

Dataland, which opened in June, was co-founded by Los Angeles-based artist Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç. The museum describes itself as a pioneering space for AI-generated art, with visitors moving through large-scale installations designed to create highly immersive experiences.

The museum's inaugural exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” uses AI models trained with images and sounds drawn from sources including museum archives, scientific collections and Anadol's travels. The exhibition is scheduled to remain on view through January 2027.

One installation responds to biometric information collected from visitors' wearable wristbands, allowing the artwork to change in real time. Other experiences incorporate rainforest sounds, visual projections and music, turning the museum visit into a combination of art exhibition and sensory environment.

Anadol sees the technology as a collaboration between artists and machines, rather than simply a tool for automatically producing images.

His approach has already attracted major attention. His earlier work “Unsupervised” became the first generative-AI artwork acquired for the permanent collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art, according to NPR.

The artist has also worked with major cultural institutions. His “Smithsonian Dreams: Castle Illuminations” project used millions of digitized Smithsonian records, scientific specimens and manuscripts to create AI-powered projections on the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C.

However, the rise of AI art is not without controversy. Critics have questioned the relationship between AI artists and large technology companies as well as the use of publicly available archives to develop models used in commercial projects. Anadol has defended his approach and argued that artists have historically worked with powerful patrons and technological innovations.

Dataland's arrival therefore represents more than the opening of another Los Angeles cultural attraction. It is part of a larger debate over authorship, creativity, data and what qualifies as art in the age of artificial intelligence.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into museums and creative industries, Dataland could become an important test of whether audiences embrace machine-assisted art as a major new form of cultural expression.