HONG KONG.- With darkness falling along Hong Kong’s waterfront against a backdrop of glimmering skyscrapers, carnival music competed with the whine of ventilation blowers as visitors bounced on the inflatable Stonehenge.

The puffy white megalithic replica was part of an installation put up this month for SummerFest, a public outdoor festival that continues for several weeks. Like its companions, including Egyptian pyramids and the giant faces of Easter Island, it was based on artificial intelligence-generated images dreamed up by Joann, an Armenian designer who has created whimsical, surreal pop-up exhibits for clients like Gucci, Marc Jacobs and Oatly Ice Cream.

The exhibit, “Inflatable Wonders,” has attracted crowds. It has also elicited mockery, as well as stirred discussion about cultural sensitivity and about what gets to be considered art versus crass commercialism, pandering to mass tastes. Some people have also been asking why more local artists aren’t being used for projects like this one.

White is a color associated with death in East Asia, and the shapes of the Stonehenge have drawn comparisons to tombstones. As space for free expression has shrunk in Hong Kong in recent years, dimming its luster as a cosmopolitan gateway, efforts to lure tourists or generate civic pride have at times struck a note of desperation or simply oddness.

The exhibit has also raised questions about whether inflatables, a growing presence in the art world, deserve to be taken seriously.

On a recent evening, some who lounged on the Stonehenge were fans. “I think this is fun and nice to look at,” said Cai Zhijian, a 45-year-old freelance photographer visiting from Fuzhou, a city in mainland China’s Fujian province, carrying a selfie stick. “You can relax here.”

Fion Ho, a 51-year-old insurance broker visiting with her father, was less impressed. “You call that a tower? The Leaning Tower of Pisa? Doesn’t it look like a toy? This is more suited for the water park.”

Hong Kong has a history of welcoming inflatable art. In 2013, a gigantic rubber duck, created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman and sponsored by a local shopping mall, graced Victoria Harbor. Thousands flocked to view it, many carrying small versions of the duck in homage. Also that year, several inflatables were installed by M+ when that museum was still under construction. Their subjects included a giant cockroach, a suckling pig and a pile of excrement.

Such works expanded the definition of contemporary art, said Vivienne Chow, Artnet News’ London correspondent and co-author of The Asia Pivot newsletter, who covered art and culture in Hong Kong for two decades. Inflatables are also fun and inviting to the public, she added.

But as event planners tried to replicate that successful blend of consumerism, tourism and public art, giant inflatables risked becoming a tired trope.

Bringing AI-generated visuals out of the realm of fantasy is another challenge. Joann, whose images inspired “Inflatable Wonders,” initially expressed dismay at how they were rendered. “I don’t like my name on this ugly exhibition,” she said in an interview with Yahoo News. “But the concept is mine. So I would love it to be stopped.” She added in the interview that she felt that the structures looked poorly proportioned, according to pictures she had seen of the exhibit (she has not seen it in person).

Grace Au Shui-lin, SummerFest’s curator, said in a radio interview that she hoped that visitors would see the exhibit for themselves, rather than basing their opinions on photographs she characterized as misleading. Central Venue Management, the event’s organizer, said that 12,000 people had visited the installations in just the first three days of the festival, which runs from July 5 to Aug. 11.

When reached for comment, Joann and Central Venue Management released a joint statement walking back Joann’s earlier comments. She had made them, it explained, after seeing “low quality and nonprofessional” photos of the exhibit that made it “difficult to accurately assess the installations’ appearance.”

The exhibit also illustrated the limitations of inflatables in the real world, even as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in art and design.

“While AI allows for limitless and surreal creativity, translating these designs into physical installations involves significant challenges. Therefore, variations from the original AI concepts are to be expected,” the statement read. It added that Joann did not receive compensation for the free public event, and that the organizers were “not required to replicate” her designs “exactly.”

Inflatable artwork has encountered other challenges. In February of this year, strong winds twice postponed the launch of “Chubby Hearts,” an installation of red balloons conceived by British artist Anya Hindmarch and intended to float above landmarks across the cityscape. Online commenters and lawmakers expressed doubt about whether the project should have received nearly $1 million (7.8 million Hong Kong dollars) in government funding.

Manfred Yuen, a prominent Hong Kong architect known for designing play spaces, said that the negative feedback reflected other sources of discontent, such as the shrinking economy, falling tourism and the shuttering of small businesses, more than a reaction to the artworks themselves, about which opinion is necessarily subjective.

He also mentioned the commissioning of overseas artists. “My question to the government is: Why can’t you use local talent?” he added. “You need to give artists the opportunity to grow. You start importing, then you keep on importing.”

Since 2018, Yuen has created “Soft Spaces,” a series of indoor and outdoor inflatable installations whose special lighting effects, music and animations are designed specifically for interactive play.

He said it was a delicate, if not impossible, task to reconcile works meant to inspire and raise questions with carnivalesque fun designed for mass consumption. But to “Inflatable Wonders” visitors, that question was not top of mind.

On a recent afternoon, Wendy Liu, a 23-year-old research student from Shenzhen, wandered into the Stonehenge after taking a turn on a nearby Ferris wheel.

“What is this exhibit meant to represent?” she asked.

She had spent the past half-hour enjoying the view of Hong Kong’s skyline from the open space by the harbor.

“This is spacious and pretty,” she said. “I think it fits the theme.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.