New Oviedo on the Park mural approved following AI controversy

After months of submissions, evaluations and decisions, including a number that were struck down due to the use of artificial intelligence, a new mural design for Oviedo on the Park has been approved by the Oviedo City Council.

In October of 2025, the Oviedo Community Redevelopment Agency approved up to $7,000 for the creation of a mural, and the Council approved a call to artists for a piece that represented “The 100th Anniversary of the City and Beyond: Oviedo Past, Present, and Future,” which would be featured on the back wall of the Oviedo on the Park boathouse.

Earlier this year the City Council voted to re-issue a call to artists after many of the submissions during the initial round of voting appeared to have been created using AI. 

At the June 15 City Council meeting, four finalists, voted on by the Public Arts Board, were presented to the Council, with the design by Oviedo-based artist Justin Herman selected as the winner on a 3-2 vote, with Mayor Megan Sladek and Councilmember Alan Ott voting against.

The winning mural design, by Oviedo-based artist Justin Herman

“There’s a lot of things that I really like about [the winning mural],” Sladek said. “There’s some things about it that are kind of weird. One of them is there’s a pineapple palm — we don’t have any naturally occurring pineapple palms in Oviedo. 

“I just looked at it before reading the explanation, and I was like, what’s with this gypsy-mermaid person?” she said. “When you read, then you understand this is a person from Greek mythology. You’ve got a lot going on: you’ve got Greek, you’ve got Spanish.”

She said the earrings make the figure look “more like a gypsy than a Greek goddess,” and “I’m just worried about her ears, like when kids pull your earrings out.”

Ott added that “if she faces the playground, she kind of looks like a mother providing for the children on the playground.”

The design does not fit the dimensions of the space perfectly, though Oviedo’s director of development services Teresa Correa said the artist is potentially amenable to tweaking it to fit correctly. Multiple Councilmembers also asked for slight changes to the design to have it more fully represent Oviedo, such as changing the palm. 

“I like this idea,” Councilmember Jeff Boddiford said. “The Iberian tile work with the connection with the Oviedo Spanish namesake, the Greek and Roman goddess of prosperity, they switched to a basket of oranges for abundance. I thought you … did a great job of picking it out.”

The finalists, however, were not the first to be picked by the Public Arts Board in the monthslong process.

The AI question

The original call to artists, which had a deadline of Dec. 4, 2025 and did not prohibit the use of AI, received 15 applications. However, concerns were raised from at least one member of the city’s Public Arts Board and multiple contestants whose work was not selected among the original top four about the use of AI for a number of the finalists. The city did not have an approved AI policy and no criteria was laid out limiting the use of AI in designs.  

At the Feb. 16 CRA and City Council meetings, Council members discussed the potential issues of selecting a design that utilized AI.

“This is a new territory for us, so we are learning how to deal with that,” Oviedo’s director of development services Teresa Correa said.

Councilmember Alan Ott said city staff had reached out to one of the finalists about the potential use of AI in their design.

“[They] got an answer that said something like, ‘well I used like three different types of software,’ which, I think, is evading the question,” Ott said. “When you look at it, it is just full of AI artifacts, and, in my opinion, if we paint this in Center Lake Park, we will be mocked.”

The lack of regulation of AI in city-funded art projects led to a larger discussion.

“It’s a problem,” Deputy Mayor Natalie Teuchert said. “I don’t want to pick an artist who’s selling their artwork by stealing other peoples’ artwork, which is currently where AI is unregulated.”

The question of how and if AI could be used in the ideation of the piece was raised.

“I would not want AI to be used in the submission, but I do not necessarily object to somebody using AI to get a general layout idea,” Mayor Megan Sladek said. “But, whatever is turned in should be the artist’s own hand having made the thing.”

The concern with utilizing AI went deeper than just the design, however.

“My concern would be whether there’s something in the concept that’s copyrighted by someone else,” Councilmember Keith Britton said. “Then it shows up as a mural and then we get in trouble.”

Correa said that as part of the application, artists had to make a declaration that they own the copyright and are selling the copyright to the city.

Following the discussion, the Council decided to have the call to artists re-opened. Twenty-three applications from 15 artists were submitted by the March 31 deadline. The submissions were parsed down to the four finalists by the Public Arts Board and were presented to City Council on June 15.

“The first time we went through [this process], we got a lot of AI slop thrown at us from applicants,” Teuchert said. “I’m very thankful that the second time we got rid of that and we had a lot of artists put a lot of work into this.”