Art by Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence has advanced and forayed so much that it plays a role in almost every aspect of people’s daily lives, be it from navigation to google assistants or translating and even speech recognition. Having such a wide potential, it is understandable that Artificial Intelligence would meld into more contemporary fields like art. But how does this happen? How can Artificial Intelligence create art? Let’s find out!

Modern day researchers and developers are inventing approaches where artificial intelligence can not only recreate art but also create on it’s own. Art is a broad term for anything that enhances one’s sense and captivates it, this can be imagery, architecture, paintings and music! It allows one to express their emotions unencumbered by the limitations of our reality and inflamed by the imagination of our minds.

Computer technology creating its own art aside from being a helping tool for artists is called Computational Creativity and the physical manifestation of this creativity, Algorithmic Art. Systems having their own creativity not only allows it to create its own art but also enables collaborative artistry between humans and AI rather than just being used as a tool. In order for AI to possess its own artistic abilities, they must have the following features-

1. Learning

The system must be capable of learning, retaining data and information, improving its skills based on this information and adapting accordingly. Learning is a process that is seen in humans and all other organisms alike, artificial systems that aren’t capable of learning or retaining information cannot be influenced or be capable of creating.

2. Aesthetic Criteria

It must have its own aesthetic criteria that is not an imitation of any other artist. It must be able to evaluate its own art and differentiate it from others. Every individual develops their art based on their own personality thus maintaining their art’s individuality, artificially creative systems must be capable of expressing this particular standard as well.

3. Creativity

An artist is defined by their capacity to create original art that does not imitate or copy another artist’s style or mannerisms. This aspect is crucial to becoming an outstanding artist, the artificial systems are allowed to be influenced by others art but must create art from scratch entirely as their own without making minor changes to pre-existing art.

4. Sociability

Every piece of art created has a social construct of its own, i.e. something it expresses through a particular medium of art. The system must be able to access this artistic production in it’s creation of art.

5. Equality

The system, while allowed to be influenced by human art, should not be subject to a particular human’s will, as this means the art it creates will be based on the human aesthetic and not its own. They must be capable of interacting with human or other artificial intelligences on equal footing.

It is to be noted that despite the mentioning of several important features that enable an AI to become a fully autonomous artist, current developments cannot fulfill all the above mentioned criteria. Let us check out some art created by AI that is currently in the forefront of this field!

• Robotic Action Painter

RAP develops it’s novel paintings by means of artificial stigmergy, randomness and chromotaxis. This system can also additionally determine and stop painting on it’s own accord.

• Analysis and Composition of Music

An artificial system, NEvMuse, created variations of Bach’s music with the help of neural networking incorporated genetic programming that was trained to determine the aesthetics of 992 musical compositions based on its popularity as a criteria to create its own composition. These variations were found to be aesthetically pleasing to many of the listeners.

• The Painting Fool

It is a software that is capable of more or less generating autonomous digital art with minimal direction having the capacity to build concepts on it’s own from source material available online. The art it creates is based on human expression as it scours the internet, web searches and social media to analyze human interactions.

With such novelties on the emergence, collaboration between man and AI can truly bring out some astoundingly beautiful renditions and images. Keeping this in mind, let’s look forward to more similar innovations to take our collective breaths away. Appreciating and creating art isn’t just for humans anymore, it’s also for AI and Robots!