AI and Machinic Creativity

Can AI systems be independently creative and make art? How can artists and machines co-create, and why should they? Various AI researchers have trained machines and generative processes to produce novel and visual interesting works---- devising machinic means of creativity. At the Rutgers Art & Artificial Intelligence Lab we created AICAN (AI-Creative Adversarial Network) tasked with using its creative algorithm to make works of art. Playform was then developed as an easy-to-use program that allows artists to integrate AI technology into their own art making as they choose: as a way to shape data, as an inspiration for new kinds of imagery, as an additional element in multi-media works, etc. All AI systems generate work in degrees of relationship between human and machine: sometimes the machine works rather independently (AICAN), and sometimes as partner with a human artist (Playform). When exhibiting the AICAN works a common question is ‘who is the artist?’, but the answer that the art is AI-derived never results in viewers rejecting the work as art, as our surveys support. There has also been strong interest on the part of artists in exploring AI capabilities. We will demonstrate AICAN and Playform, discuss interactions with the public and the artists, and address questions of authorship and creativity within this new means of making art in the 21st century.