Will AI replace our artists any time soon?

Human creativity seems to be the last frontier for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Many people claim that AI is good at various things, it excels way beyond human expectations, but it will be challenging to exhibit creativity. The creative process is still enshrined in mystery. We can use techniques to cultivate innovative thoughts, but in the end, we are not entirely sure how it happens. This lack of understanding regarding our own biological processes makes it hard for scientists to replicate them on a machine. Notwithstanding these limitations, we are not that far in creating innovative masterpieces using AI.

When it comes to textual content, AI is extremely good at processing words. We can list various instances in the past, where AI poetry was indistinguishable from poems created by humans. It’s curious to note that in 2016, a text entitled “The day a computer writes a novel” was submitted to a short-story competition in Japan. The novel follows a computer program as it realizes its capabilities as a writer while abandoning its pre-programmed duties. The text was entirely written using an AI, and it managed to pass the first round of the competition.

Paintings too are being produced by an AI. In 2018, Christie’s Auction House received a painting entitled the “Portrait of Edmond De Belamy”.

The incredible thing about it was that it was created by an AI system using a process which mimics human cognition. The AI was initially exposed to hundreds of paintings having a similar style, and then it was asked to generate hundreds of potential pictures. The image which fitted the genre but which was also substantially different from the rest was eventually chosen.  Even though its creators initially thought they might make a few thousand dollars out of it, in actual fact, the painting was sold for close to half a million dollars and is today considered as being the first artwork created by a machine.

The creation of digital music or even songs using AI has been examined for quite a while. Music is relatively straightforward since the system can get inspiration from the various tunes which are available. In fact, there have been many attempts in recent years to create AI tunes. An exciting project called “Feedback Loops” by King’s College in the UK uses an AI to look at a dancer and interpret her moves in the form of a melody. But creating an actual song with words is a totally different story. A few months back, the University of Toronto created an AI system whose task was to listen to 100 hours of online Christmas music and compose the first AI Christmas carol. The result was described as somewhat bland, off-festival and unsettling. So it will be quite a while before AI topples Mariah Carrey from the Top 10 with its first Christmas hit.

Dance and theatre too, are part of AI’s repertoire. We have seen various shows where AI actively participated in the performance. The University of Malta had created virtual avatars to dance with a human dancer. For New Year’s Eve 2020, Boston Dynamics- the company which produces the most advanced robots in the world, released a unique choreography. Four of its robots where seen performing dance moves to The Contours’ hit “Do you love me.” The result was something rather remarkable and beyond what most people are capable of achieving. More impressive is maybe the drone display that uses an army of around 500 drones to create moving 3D shapes in the sky. They were used to celebrate the Scottish New Year’s Eve in 2020 and other major worldwide events.

Theatre backdrops too are today generated by an AI. Manipulated images have been around for years. Photoshop (one of the most effective programs used to edit pictures) can modify existing scenes or even create fake ones with some effort. However, just last year, Nividia announced GauGAN, an impressive AI system capable of converting children like scribbles into high-resolution photos. A simple line with a circle changes into a realistic picture of a waterfall next to a lake. Thus creating high-resolution, photorealistic backdrops on the fly.

Computer-Generated Imagery (or CGI) has been extensively used in movies to create all sorts of reconstructions from catastrophic disasters to animated characters. The latest fad seems to be in the creation of virtual actors.

These actors are meant to replace the real actors who might be too expensive to work with and do not follow the director’s instructions to the letter. In some cases, they are used instead of actors who died or had become too old for the part. The mythical actor James Dean, who died more than 60 years ago, is said to star in a movie called “Finding Jack”. In the Star Wars movie “Rogue One”, since Carrie Fisher (the original actress of Princess Leia) had aged, a digital body for the young Princess was created, and her facial expressions kept. AI was then used to simply fill in the dots.

So in synthesis, AI can either be the ingenious creator of art or merely a tool used by the artist. Of course, this raises a lot of questions like who gets credit for AI art? Is it the program? But it has no legal entity! What about the programmer?

The programmer created the algorithm, and it can direct the AI to acquire new knowledge. But like a master with his apprentice, it does not determine what is being learnt!

Of course, this debate has no conclusion and will keep on raging for the coming years. But we should approach it with an open viewpoint, embrace technology, and accept that we can reach new unimaginable heights by combining AI with the arts.