participate.
The most interesting thing is that as a work created by AI, the signature on the lower right corner of the painting reads:
“creation” imitated by algorithm
The creation team of this work, OBVIOUS, is composed of three young French people. They introduced: “The purpose of creating this work is to visualize AI technology and promote it to more people.”
One of the members, Caselles-Dupré, introduced the creative process: “The algorithm consists of two parts. One is the generator, and the other is the discriminator. We provided the system with 15,000 pictures drawn between the 14th and 20th centuries. The database of portraits cultivates its “art cell.” The generator generates a new image based on this collection, and then the discriminator is responsible for finding the difference between the artificial image and the image created by the generator, that is, they will continue to perform Visual Turing test, Until the discriminator can’t tell which is man-made and which is painted by AI, the goal is achieved.“
During the test, they mixed human-created art with AI art and asked the discriminator questions such as “Do you think this painting was made by a machine or a human artist?” and some relatively indirect questions , Such as “Where do you think the inspiration for this piece came from?”
For artificial intelligence, portrait painting is an extremely complex type. Because humans can highly express facial curves, showing subtle facial expressions and eye expressions. But the OBVIOUS creative team said that they chose the most difficult portrait because they wanted to convey their point of view through this work, that is, algorithms can imitate creativity.
This is a media manuscript released by OBVIOUS, with a sentence written on it: “It is not only humans that are creative.”
The flyer Obvious provided to reporters at the press conference
So the question is, who is the real author of this “Portrait of Edmund Bellamy”?
Caselles-Dupré said: “If the author is the person who creates the image, then it is the machine. If the author is the person who has the idea and decides to implement it, it will be us.”
If you only look at the form of the painting, then the algorithm just generates the visual form and follows the aesthetic principles extracted from the existing artwork. But if we consider the entire creative process, this work is more like conceptual art than traditional painting. In other words, the concept behind the creation of the work is more important than the final result.
The same evaluation logic is also being accepted by other awards and art professional institutions. The following piece of “The Butcher’s Son” was mocked by many art critics as “AI version of Bacon” and criticized it for being boring and lacking aesthetics. But it won the Lumen Prize (Lumen Prize) dedicated to the art of technological creation.
Mario Klingemann, The Butcher’s Son, Artificial Intelligence, 2018. Source: Lumen Prize
Will AI replace artists?
Will humans and AI become competitors or coexist in cooperation?
This sounds a bit like the theme of The Matrix, but in reality, someone is studying this topic in real life.
Three years ago, Harsha Gangadharbatla, a professor of advertising at the University of Colorado at Boulder, saw this AI-made work sold at such a high price at Christie’s, and he was very puzzled. Human beings will devote their passion, hard work, and even soul when creating works, but if works are made by AI algorithms, can we still experience the emotional resonance that works of art bring us? He therefore initiated a study on how humans perceive computer-made and human-made artworks, and published the results in the journal Empirical Studies in the Arts.
First, Gangadharbatla established an online survey, asking people to distinguish between art produced by AI and art created by humans. He recruited 211 subjects from Amazon to participate in the survey. Each participant judged 5 works. The works consisted of works created by AI and humans. About 80% of the interviewees guessed at least four incorrectly.
In other words, most people cannot tell the difference. This result is not ideal for humans.
Portrait of La Comtesse de Belamy, 2018, the fictitious wife of Le Comte. Source: Obvious
Gangadharbatla himself expressed concern. He said: “The role of humans has been shrinking every day, and the role of big data is growing. Therefore, creativity is the last fortress that humans have.”
In the previous article, I have always used “work” instead of “artwork” to describe AI art, because this is also a major issue that has caused controversy among all parties. We are interested in a certain piece of work and are willing to pay a high price. Is it because the piece is aesthetically pleasing or because it uses new technology? Do paintings created by AI count as works of art?
Is AI art the next photography?
When photography was invented in the early 19th century, many people thought it could not be regarded as art. The mainstream traditional artists at the time fought fiercely, but finally succumbed: A century later, photography became a recognized art genre. Now, the photos are on display in museums and sold at sky-high prices.
Will the art of artificial intelligence production follow the same path?
For a long time, art history is a process of breaking the tradition and breaking the law. Every new genre or category appeared, was not understood, criticized and criticized by the world at that time. The unacceptably dark, morbid, and dramatic scenes described by the painter Caravaggio are not the same as the ideal and perfect paintings before him. Picasso rejected the concrete form and instead used more abstract brushwork to express his emotions. Duchamp refused to regard art as a sacred object. He used the urinal as art to make art go down the altar.
Rothko(Rothko) completely rejects graphics and representations, and draws various large and fuzzy color blocks on the canvas. Andy Warhol (Andy Warhol) uses factory manufacturing and various popular elements to create art, and refuses to give the artwork any meaning. Jeff Koons (Jeff Koons) created more ugly, kitsch, repetitive works, and steal ideas from other artists, using Yu further creates his own meaningless batch art.
The art world doesn’t care whether Koons or anyone else is immoral.It doesn’t matter, just reject the old standard. First is the rejection of perfection, then the rejection of realism, then the rejection of form, and then the rejection of meaning.
It now appears that we have rejected anything that can be rejected.
In contrast, AI art has not yet started. AI is still relying on imitating the works of predecessors to create images, and it will take some time for them to start looking for ways for artists to create meaning and respond to social trends in the true sense. For now, they are naturally 100% derived.
But of all the ways in which creativity develops, artificial intelligence art is undoubtedly one of the most interesting and, of course, the smartest. Art has always been only a way of expressing human concepts. Like AI, artists draw inspiration from the world around them. If we continue to reject conventional art, then we should resist simple, meaningless and boring art. Perhaps, when the dust settles and the concepts of technology and people continue to develop, we will realize that tradition is used to break, and the development of technology is not the end. Nothing is set in stone, everything is In the midst of change.
At present, just because machines can almost produce artworks on their own does not mean that they will replace artists. This only means that the artist has an additional creative tool.
Maybe, more likely to replace the auction house
However, after the initial enthusiasm, the auction house may not be the final destination of AI art.
Although it created sky-high prices on auctions in 18 years, in November 2019, another work in the Bellamy series, “La Baronne de Belamy”, did not succeed at Sotheby’s auction house. The final transaction price was only US$25,000, slightly higher than the lowest estimate.
La Baronne de Belamy, source: Obvious
Similarly, the artist Mario Klingemann (Mario Klingemann), which Sotheby’s sold in March of the same year, was created in London Artificial intelligence works were also sold at a low price of 51,000 US dollars.
The market is the best barometer. After driving up and down, the AI art bubble seems to have burst. But further market reactions are showing that the true world of AI in the field of art may be moving away from auction houses, or even replacing them.
Now, using AI technology, we can find the basic information of a work of art, such as artist, title, date, and even price, by uploading a partial photo of a work. The advanced recognition engine can also flag works deemed to be lost or identify fakes.
Screenshot: Art information search APP “Shazam for art”
In addition, AI can extract features, visual features, theme styles, and prices based on the works previously purchased by the collector, and combine the occupation, age, estimated net worth, annual art budget, etc. to the collector. Give purchase recommendations, something like Taobao’s “Guess you like”. In the future, galleries and auction houses can also use this technology to calculate customer preferences and determine which types of works are more attractive, so as to more accurately meet customer needs.
At the same time, AI can also curate. It can tailor exhibitions for galleries and museums by analyzing space, lighting, technical level, budget and work size, style, etc.
Finally, AI can also help us predict the future direction of art prices. The algorithm will establish an analysis file of a single artist, including the artist’s educational background, agency gallery, academic status, auction price, collector list and exposure, etc., just like the quantitative indicators of the financial market, it can predict the value of the artist’s work in the future how much is it.
In other words, although AI will never replace artists, it is likely to replace us art industry practitioners such as gallery owners, auction house employees, and art consultants.
Finally, I would like to end this article with a sentence from the famous French writer Romain Gary (Romain Gary) in “White Dog”: ” The only way to escape the danger of human obsolescence is to take on our responsibilities and overcome our unconsciousness, lest we lose our humanity.”
This article is from WeChat official account:World Talk (ID: globusnews)< span class = "text-remarks">, author: 1111XXXX