It’s Getting Hard to Tell If a Painting Was Made by a Computer or a Human

Originally Published on Artsy

Cultural pundits can close the book on 2017: The biggest artistic achievement of the year has already taken place. It didn’t happen in a paint-splattered studio on the outskirts of Beijing, Singapore, or Berlin. It didn’t happen at the Venice Biennale. It happened in New Brunswick, New Jersey, just off Exit 9 on the Turnpike.

What’s The Next Great Art Movement? Ask This Neural Network

Originally published by Fast Company

Ahmed Elgammal is creating AI that thinks like an artist.

In just over a year, a technique called “style transfer” has discombobulated everything I’d figured out about art. By feeding many van Goghs into a piece of software, style transfer can deconstruct his strokes of paint–and then copy them, turning any photo into a conceivable mashup with Starry Night. Artificial intelligence had done something that a century of artists and scholars could not: replicate van Gogh’s unique visual genius.

But does that make style transfer AI an artistic genius? Or is it more the equivalent of a monkey that’s been taught to play pseudo-Bach hymns on a recorder?

Generating “art” by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms

By Ahmed Elgammal - Published on Medium

If we teach the machine about art and art styles and force it to generate novel images that do not follow established styles, what would it generate? Would it generate something that is aesthetically appealing to humans? Would that be considered “art”?