First Robo-AI Painter To Debut At London Museum  

A robotic artist called Ai-Da, developed by the University of Oxford and engineers at the University of Leeds, will make its grand debut at the London’s Design Museum this summer.

The life-size humanoid artist draws, paints, and makes sculptures. Algorithms process optical sensors embedded within the robot’s eyes into a set of coordinates, guiding the robot’s drawing hands. Whatever the humanoid sees, it can paint… 

According to Inceptive Mind, Ai-Da is expected to perform her first public painting at the museum in London between May and June, subject to COVID-19 restrictions. The exhibition will feature several “self-portraits,” which the humanoid will create by looking at itself in front of a mirror. 

Ai-Da’s co-inventor, Aiden Meller, was quoted by The Next Web, describing the humanoid’s painting style as “shattered.” 

“We didn’t want tight representational, photographic images, even though we could have programmed it to do that. We went against that because we realized that people would just think it was some kind of expensive photocopier. But more than that, we wanted to show the expressiveness of the creativity in the algorithm,” Meller said. 

Some have argued artificial intelligence isn’t capable of real creativity.

Though Meller disagrees, he said Ai-Da’s algorithms were designed for creativity. 

“In actual fact, it’s turned out better than we anticipated because when Ada looks at you with cameras in her eyes, to do a drawing or a painting, she does a different one each time,” said Meller. “Even if she’s faced with the same image or same person, it would be a completely different outcome.”

Ai-Da is part of a growing number of artificial intelligence systems producing art. It’s only a matter of time before this technology becomes more widespread and starts displacing human artists. 

Perhaps, it would take a couple of Sotheby’s or Christie’s auctions of artificial intelligence art to set a precedence in the art community. 

No matter what, artificial intelligence in the art world should frighten artists as this disturbing trend is happening across nearly every industry – artificial intelligence and automation are displacing jobs, resulting in rising technological unemployment levels.