In recent months, the artistic provocateur and technologist Alexander Reben has devoted his time to producing a series of visually arresting paintings.
And yet, the California-based artist and MIT-trained roboticist has yet to pick up a brush or a tube of paint.
His technique relies instead on a new creative tool that artists such as Reben are just beginning to explore: artificial intelligence. With the help of algorithms, Reben is producing images in collaboration with machine intelligence. The images are eventually reproduced physically in a Chinese town that is home to artists who specialize in re-creating works of art on the canvas, completing what Reben refers to as “a robotic loop of art-making.”
VIA Washington Post
More at his website
Steps are described as:
1. an AI combines different words together to generate an image of what it thinks those words look like
2. the AI then produces variants of those images by “breeding” it with other images, creating “child” images
3. another AI shows the artist several “child” images, measuring his brainwaves and body-signals to select which image he likes best
4. step 2 and 3 are repeated until the AI determines it has reached an optimal image
5. another AI increases the resolution of the image by filling in blanks with what it thinks should exist there
6. the result is sent to be painted on canvas by anonymous painters in a Chinese painting village
7. a final AI looks at the image, tries to figure out what is in it, and makes a title