Can AIs Create True Art?

An anonymous reader shares an analysis: Last month, AI-generated art arrived on the world auction stage under the auspices of Christie's, proving that artificial intelligence can not only be creative but also produce world class works of art -- another profound AI milestone blurring the line between human and machine. Naturally, the news sparked debates about whether the work produced by Paris-based art collective Obvious could really be called art at all. Popular opinion among creatives is that art is a process by which human beings express some idea or emotion, filter it through personal experience and set it against a broader cultural context -- suggesting then that what AI generates at the behest of computer scientists is definitely not art, or at all creative.

The story raised additional questions about ownership. In this circumstance, who can really be named as author? The algorithm itself or the team behind it? Given that AI is taught and programmed by humans, has the human creative process really been identically replicated or are we still the ultimate masters? At GumGum, an AI company that focuses on computer vision, we wanted to explore the intersection of AI and art by devising a Turing Test of our own in association with Rutgers University's Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab and Cloudpainter, an artificially intelligent painting robot. We were keen to see whether AI can, in fact, replicate the intent and imagination of traditional artists, and we wanted to explore the potential impact of AI on the creative sector.

Intriguingly, while at face value the AI artwork was indistinguishable from that of the more traditional artists, the test highlighted that the creative spark and ultimate agency behind creating a work of art is still very much human. Even though the Cloudpainter machine has evolved over time to become a highly intelligent system capable of making creative decisions of its own accord, the final piece of work could only be described as a collaboration between human and machine. Van Arman served as more of an 'art director' for the painting. Although Cloudpainter made all of the aesthetic decisions independently, the machine was given parameters to meet and was programed to refine its results in order to deliver the desired outcome. This was not too dissimilar to the process used by Obvious and their GAN AI tool.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.