From helping artists find inspiration for their next work to creating art in entirely new and innovative ways, AI is forever changing the way we see and create art. AI artists are finding new, innovative ways to use machines to create and manipulate different forms of art in new and efficient ways. By working with AI machines, artists are able to use technology as a tool to complement human thought to create something that cannot be imagined.
In this blog post, we explore how artists can use AI to explore new creative possibilities and what this means for the future of art. Later, we’ll look at some examples of how AI is being used by artists today. AI has been used in art for some time, and not just to create images, as machines do. Rather, artists are using AI to explore the new future of art, where we use technology to express ourselves in new ways. Artists today are not just using AI to produce artwork, they are working directly with it, expanding its capabilities and discovering new ways to use it as a means of expression. As AI algorithms begin to produce artworks comparable to human creativity, the question arises as to what role artists might play in future AI developments.
While some believe we are in the early stages of the next great art movement, others are less certain that machines will have access to the creative potential that humans do. There is still much we don’t understand about human creativity. Until we can fully grasp the creative thought processes of a brain, machines are unlikely to be able to learn how to mimic them.
Of course, just because machines can create art almost automatically doesn’t mean they will replace artists. The idea of artificially intelligent art is rather spectacular and kitschy, and that is why there is a minority of artists and professionals in the field who believe that machines cannot produce creative output on par with humans. Many artists fear that leaning on machines could compromise the essence of art or even lead to the replacement of humans as creators. Artists who welcome AI see machine-generated art as a new possibility, with the process itself becoming a form of art.
While the advent of AI has led to fears that humans will be replaced by machines in fields ranging from customer service to journalism, artists see this development as an opportunity rather than a threat. Artists are being replaced by machine learning and other technologies that are driving the growth of the arts and other industries. The real changes we’re seeing involve the new skills artists are developing to hack technology tools like machine learning to create art on their terms, and the importance of curation in an increasingly data-driven world.
Similar to the creative arts, the design world is likely to see more collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. As artificially generated and AI-powered art becomes prevalent, artists will have to fundamentally rethink how they work, how much time they spend, and how they structure their creative processes, Loughridge said. Eventually, AI could become a collaboration between humans and machines: Artist Andrew Wilson-Rennie, for example, is working to find ways AI can complement humans.
AI can also be used to make art using different media: AI algorithms enable art creators to improve their work, and AI also empowers entrepreneurs and creative industries that want to enable more people to engage with music, literature, or visual art generated by AI at different levels. For example, AICAN (Artificial Intelligent Creative Adversarial Network) is a program that can be thought of as an almost autonomous artist that has learned existing styles and aesthetics and is able to independently create innovative images. Argentine artist Sofia Crespo, who uses artificial intelligence to create works, is part of a generative art movement in which humans create rules for computers, which then use algorithms to generate new forms, ideas, and patterns.
The program includes case studies of the application of current machine-learning techniques to artworks and explores the extent to which AI-powered creativity is possible and whether the synergy between humans and algorithms can help unleash human creative potential. Organized by academic discipline and technology category, the research discusses in-depth connections between art and science, such as artificial intelligence and robotics, and explores novel ways to access artists’ works. The ways in which AI and technology systems are merging and the implications of future intelligences for art making are explored, as are the future evolution of biological self-evolution and the fate of art in a technologically intelligent future. The report concludes that the complementarity between humans and intelligence in art is a rich and ongoing process, and that modern artists are constantly exploring and expanding the technological possibilities for making art. Intelligence, nature, learning, and non-biological intelligence are emerging technologies and concepts brought forth by developments in artificial intelligence that support the creation of modern interactive digital-intelligent art and influence aesthetic trends among audiences and in the minds of artists. Following Google’s hosting of the first-ever Artificial Intelligence in Art exhibition in February 2016 and a groundbreaking sale of AI-generated paintings this past February, we take a deeper look at AI’s advancements in the creative arts and the impact it is having on the field and the concept of creative as a whole. After leading the first AI art exhibition held at the Grey Area Foundation for the Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016, Google’s graphics guru Blaise Aguera y Arcas described another aspect of the technology’s creative capabilities. Just last month, AI-generated art was auctioned around the world – a piece commissioned by Christies that shows AI is as much about creativity as it is about producing world-class works of art: another milestone of deep AI blurring the lines between human and machine.
