Artificial neural networks are hard at work across the world writing sonnets, playing melodies, making art. Is it really art? Koko and Michael, two Great Apes who were taught sign language, both created a great deal of expressive painting that reflected their feelings and their environment. Is what they made art, or are the pleasing designs that both the AIs and the Great Apes make just good design? What makes art different from design, and does it have anything to do with the type of mind doing the making?
Since we now have two non-human entities making art, we can compare them to find some differences and commonalities, and explore what art means. Both art and design uses a shared visual language to communicate an idea. A shared visual language is one of color, shape, line. The difference comes in the communication.
Art starts with an idea or feeling, and the artist chooses the shared visual language and various methods to communicate and share the idea with viewers. Art tried to share an idea. Design is a tool that uses visual elements–it also communicates, but it communicates an action that the viewer needs to take. Think of it this way: art is a way for the artist to reach out and hold the hand of a viewer. Design reaches out and points a finger, showing a viewer where to go.
So art is about intention, and it starts with a desire to communicate a feeling. Koko and Michael were given acrylic paint, brushes, and canvas, and they made paintings. They titled their paintings, and the expressionistic works are full of color and movement and shapes that, to human viewers, reflect joy and happiness and a sweetness of nature and perception.
So how are neural networks creating works of visual imagery and communication? With human collaboration and direction, neural networks are scanning huge amounts of data to uncover previously unknown patterns that reflect ideas, and using those patterns to add to the visual language that we use to communicate art. But the ideas aren’t, at this time, original. AIs can show us previously unknown patterns in the visual language, and can make visual works of design that tap into the collective works until they make something we recognize. But they aren’t reaching across to take our hands and share an idea.
When Koko was asked to make a painting about love, she understood what was being asked. She thought about it, then used wide, expressive brushstrokes of pale orange and warm bright pink in a pattern that looks full of joy. She named her painting “Love.”
If anyone asks an AI to paint an image of love, it could do it- but what it would produce is a reflection of all of the human art previously made with the word love in the title. It would be easy to like, and people would recognize it, and wonder if they had seen something like it before. But it would be clever design, not art. For art, we need to look deep into our own hearts, or into the secret hearts of the Great Apes.
For more information on Artificial Intelligence, please contact us.
The post Can AIs Create Art? Could they be compared with Great Apes? appeared first on STRATECTA.