Technology is undeniably making our lives easier and more carefree. We can now meet new people without leaving our house, travel using VR, and with sites such as Spela, we can even gamble online. It is nothing unusual nowadays to hear about how AI is capable of performing some smaller, repetitive tasks, but we still believe that humans are the ones with the ability to produce works of art. AI isn’t capable of creativity, right? Well, it turns out that AI might even challenge us in that field one day. In October 2018, the first AI-generated painting was sold for $432,500, which is more than some of the artwork created by people. How far can AI go when it comes to art, and can it be better than us?
Paintings and Drawings
Ever since Harold Cohen created AARON, a program that produces art, we have seen several examples in which AI shows off its capability of creating new artwork. DeepDream, one of Google’s inventions, is a program that creates art by fining patterns. The finished product is a rather psychedelic image, which a lot of people find interesting and innovative.
Another example is the Pikazoo App that finds patterns in two images you upload and combines them in a new, striking piece of art. By uploading photos, AI can also combine and blend them, so that the finished product is a video that looks like it was taken with the latest professional camera. You can even get pictures of soundwaves you produce which look like an artwork themselves, and you do not even have to own a paintbrush. But perhaps the most curious example of AI creativity is Microsoft’s drawing bot which follows a written description and paints accordingly so that you get exactly the kind of a picture you wanted.
Music
AI has been used for a long time by producers and musicians in order to make more interesting sounds with better quality. However, there are a few cases that show how AI can make music on its own, and not just enhance an existing melody. These days, it is used to make royalty-free music, that content creators can add to their videos without the fear of getting a copyright claim.
Using Flow Machines, researchers were able to end up with a pop track ‘Daddy’s Car’. The program used the information of 12000 songs from its database and ‘composed’ this new track that sounds a bit bizarre, but still impressive. Google is attempting at improving this even more and is working on learning algorithms that can help AI make art, but also help artists and musicians in their jobs.
Dance
It sounds a bit outlandish to think that AI could be dancing on its own in the next couple of years. This still isn’t the case, but there are instances in which AI has been used to make choreographies and help dancers in their fields. In collaboration with Google, Wayne McGregor, a British choreographer, made an AI system that can predict dance moves. Not only that, but it also takes McGregor’s particular style into account when predicting the choreography. Just like with Flow Machines, they uploaded hours and hours worth of videos of McGregor’s dances and the AI was able to find the patterns. So far, AI is still not capable of inventing new moves, but it could be a pretty good choreographer is you need one.
