Highlights
- Arguably AI is exceptional at many things, but not creativity.
- When exposed to paintings with a specific aesthetic, an AI system generated an artwork that was sold at the auction house, Christie’s.
- The "Portrait of Edmond De Belamy" brought in half a million US dollars and is now regarded as the first piece of artificial art.
- Other AI tools are helping human artists expand their repertoire and push the boundaries of the possible.
In this article
Will AI replace Human art?
Can AI master human inventiveness?
The art world has a strange but tiring obsession with art created by artificial intelligence, as they had with modern technology throughout history. What's next?
Artificial Intelligence's (AI) final frontier appears to be human inventiveness. Many argue that AI is exceptional at many things, far above human expectations, but it won't be easy to be creative. There are many unknown things about the creative process.
Although there is a strategy that we can employ to foster creative thinking, we are ultimately unsure of how it unfolds. It's challenging for scientists to simulate our biological processes on a machine due to the lack of knowledge.
Despite these restrictions, we are still not too far from producing artistic masterpieces with AI.
AI advances to change the definition of "Art."
If art is less structured, and more inspired, how does it intersect with AI?
Artificial intelligence has already equaled (and often surpassed) humans at several tasks, which is a sobering reality. The visible instances are games. Deep Blue tackled our strategy at chess in 1997 & AlphaGo surpassed human ability at Go in 2016; AlphaGo Zero learned to beat AlphaGo while we keep wondering how it's even possible!
Games are frequently rigid, mathematical objects - the issues we anticipate machines to be good at. But we perceive art to be unique, less structured, and more inspired, but even in this field, machines are advancing.
Think about the following instances:
StyleGAN modifies one input file to reflect the aesthetic of another.
DALL-E produces a series of graphics solely using text input.
Playform creates new graphics in the given art style using simple drawings and examples as input.
But it isn't the beginning. The "Portrait of Edmond De Belamy" artwork was presented to Christie's Auction House in 2018. Its creation by an AI system employing a method resembling human intellect made it astounding.
After exposing the AI to hundreds of paintings with a similar esthetic, it was instructed to come up with hundreds of potential images. Ultimately, the picture that best suited the genre while being significantly unique from the others was picked.
The painting, sold for nearly half a million dollars even though its makers had first estimated it would bring just a few thousand dollars, is now regarded as the first piece of artificial art.
We realized that portraits offer the reliable path to portray our idea, where those algorithms can leverage creative aspects
Will AI replace artists?
Will tools and learned patterns replace or enhance creativity?
The question everyone returns to, as "artificial intelligence" gradually expands the limits of the possible: Will AI overtake human creativity?
An article in Scientific American titled, "Is Art created by AI Really Art?" tries to tackle the question, but naturally the answer is ambiguous, as the definitions and semantics of art itself are in flux.
In the near horizon, no one is projecting that AI will replace human artists. But it is certainly offering more options for an expression of emotion– more paint in your paintbox, if you will. AI lowers the entry-level skill requirements and opens the world to more creative modes. Even if the human vision is still paramount, there is a degree of simplicity and convenience introduced.
An analogy can be found in the history of photography. Processing film used to take much more time than often even capturing images. This is the burden that technologists are attempting to address.
The purpose of Effective Art tools is to simplify the creation process for the artist.
If you consider photography's history as an art form, you'll see that processing film took up much more time than actually capturing images throughout the film era. The "injustice" that technologists are attempting to address is essentially this.
The Digital Art community believes you shouldn't spend more time performing all the tedious tasks necessary to achieve what you love. You should devote all your time to following your goal and doing what you love.
What does the future hold?
Ultimately, it's all about collaboration
There does not need to be a replacement for human creativity even when AI can construct images that are on par with or better than a human artist's understanding of creativity.
As it does in every other subject, Artificial Intelligence (AI) may and should be seen as a tool to support human innovation in creativity. Similar to the concept of a paintbrush, AI serves as a tool that encourages artistic creation.
One of the turning moments in the development of artistic expression over the millennia is AI. With the help of a machine, it might even result in hitherto unimagined fields of heightened human creativity shortly and the creation of Effective Art.
'Artificial Intelligence is one among the different tech concepts that can impact the future art market — even though it's early to assume what those differences might occur,' says Richard Lloyd, who organized the sale of Bellamy. 'It will be exciting to see how this revolution plays out.'
