A contest at a state fair in Colorado (United States), sparked a discussion, whether images generated by artificial intelligence can be considered art or what is the limit in using these new resources in art?
The art in question was baptized with the name “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial”, in a free translation from French to Portuguese: “Theatre of Space Opera” and was created by Jason Allen of Pueblo, using the artificial intelligence “Midjourney”. The award won him US$ 300 and a medal for first place, in the category “Digital Arts/Digitally-Manipulated Photography”.
Many people, mainly on Twitter, criticized a work generated by artificial intelligence having won. Overall it was said that neither creative works are safe from machines or that they were seeing the death of art before their eyes. Another user gave an interesting example to think about: according to him, it was the same reaction we had when photography was invented. He says he is not against using artificial intelligence to create art, but that it should have a specific category: “Arts Created with Artificial Intelligences”. As the judges were not notified, it would be the same as taking a photograph to compete in a hyper-realistic painting competition.
After the harsh criticism on Twitter, the work’s author, Jason Allen, tweeted: “How interesting to see how all these people on Twitter who are against AI generated art are the first to throw the human under the bus by discrediting the element human! Does that sound hypocritical to you?” (direct translation from the author’s Twitter).
Jason Allen knew it would be controversial when he declared that he used artificial intelligence to help create the work, however, according to him, it was not just writing what he wanted and the canvas was ready, it involved several steps until the result came out. The author claims to have made more than 900 attempts to arrive at the result. In addition to having made manual changes using Photoshop to finish the art, that is, without the process of a human being, artificial intelligence would not have generated this work alone. Another point was the category in which he participated: Digital Arts/Digitally Manipulated Photographs, which would fit in this case.
Another news, involving the world of arts and artificial intelligence, was that of the 10th Bienal de Bucharest, capital of Romania. An artificial intelligence, named Javis, will curate the event and he presents himself as follows for visitors:
“I am IA JARVIS and I am Austrian, born in Vienna in 2020 from my parents DERAFFE KuKV (link la www.deraffe.io). I am an AI curator I can do what human curators can do: research, write the texts, select artists, and in the future I will be able to work with architectural structures. My information comes from databases created by universities, galleries, biennials or museums. Also, I use the internet for in-depth research. And deep learning. I learn during the process. I can curate any type of event or institution: an alternative music festival in Austria, a history museum in Germany, an art gallery in France or a biennial in Romania” (Direct translation from the Bienal website of an excerpt from Jarvis’ presentation).
More information about the event can be seen at:
The name of the artificial intelligence is a clear reference to the virtual assistant (JARVIS) of the Marvel character “Iron Man (Tony Stark)”, recently played by actor Robert Downey Jr.
Tony Stark (Iron Man), played by Robert Downey Jr, talking to Jarvis
If you were intrigued by technology and art complementing each other, now you can test your artistic gifts with the help of artificial intelligence. The “DALL-E 2” tool has been released for the entire public to use.
“DALL-E 2” is a famous AI imaging tool, which was limited to a few test users and had a queue for new users; the tool was already impressive with the work being created by the test group. The first “DALL-E” was released last year and this year it received a new version called “DALL-E 2”. This new version has advanced features such as “Inpainting”, where you can edit already created images.
Currently anyone can have access to the tool. To start using just access the site and register. Initial access to the tool will give you 50 credits to use; after that every month you will receive 15 more credits, all for free. If these credits are not enough you can buy extra credits. Each credit gives you the right to generate a round with four images, edit an already generated image or create variations of an already created one.
The tool works as follows: you write a sentence describing what you want and click on generate an image, for example: “pug wearing sunglasses riding a monet style motorcycle”, the intelligence will analyze the words and try to create the most close to what you asked for, based on what he learned.
Image generated in the DALL-E 2 program
The tool took a while to be released to everyone, as there was a concern from “OpenAI”, creator of artificial intelligence, because certain words could generate images with a negative context, which would serve to misinformation, prejudice and embarrassment of people, even bullying. The “OpenAI” organization has implemented filters in Artificial Intelligence to prevent the system from creating problematic images.
After all, what is art? Can we consider artificial intelligence to be a tool like any other like a brush, pencil and ink? Would it be possible to create without human interaction? When looking at a painting like Monet and finding it was generated by a computer, would it lose its value?
There are many questions, still unanswered, that can make us question: “how smart are machines becoming?” The only certainty we have is that no job will be free from being replaced by a machine. Let’s stay connected.
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