This slogan from an German IT industry event shows that even creativity in the advertising industry has the potential to drastically change under the influence of AI. — Photo: Philipp von Ditfurth/dpa
BERLIN: Computers are painting pictures, composing music and now they're writing texts that actually make sense, too.
The writings are typically the work of ChatGPT, a robot that web users can command to create texts about everything you can possibly imagine. They aren't too bad, either. You can't tell they aren't written by a person, not at first glance, anyway.
A while back, artificial intelligence (AI) completed Ludwig van Beethoven's 10th symphony - the work of DALL-E, a programme that creates art which was developed by OpenAI of the US, just like ChatGPT.
And now anyone with an internet connection can use a robot to create literature, with the latest development even capable of combining images with text.
Such generative AI is pretty scary for some people who fear that art may be under siege from robots.
A double-edged sword with mixed results
AI "can be a threat but it can also be an opportunity for the arts, depending on the way it's used." That's the answer of... ChatGPT itself.
People from the creative industries are also weighing the changing landscape, including Konrad Zerr, Professor of marketing, market research and communications research at Pforzheim, Germany. "I think it's got enormous potential," he says.
Zerr tasked his students with creating a piece of art with AI. They asked ChatGPT to make a poem in the style of German poet Heinrich Heine that describes two people who go to a Christmas market and get into a fight.
The outcomes were entertaining. "Whether you can see the great poet in our AI-generated poems is doubtful at this point," was the view of the students themselves.
The texts are no literary sensation. If you ask ChatGPT to write a poem about a cat in the style of Franz Kafka, say, you get a rather uninspiring work about Kiki, a feline who wakes up one day and notices something strange, in the style of "The Metamorphosis."
But there are other, more impressive examples, such as the "A Girl With Glowing Earrings," an image created by photographer and "digital creator" Julien van Dieken, using AI. It's based on "Girl with the Pearl Earring," by Dutch master Jan Vermeer, and is currently on show in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
That upset some viewers, who asked why the museum had selected that particular work for display. "Because we liked it, quite simply," a spokesperson says.
Before that, agency Tunnel23 created a poem with the aid of AI and an algorithms for a competition run by the Brentano society, which included it in their anthology.
A danger to art?
Might robots take over the art world? Not quite, say observers. "Art is always an interactive experience in which people are weighing their responses to reality," says lecturer Jessica Heesen of Tübingen University, who focuses on ethical and philosophical issues relating to media and the digital world.
What AI does is focus on patterns and probability, says Heesen. But what it lacks is "the artist as a person, the aura of the original and also the challenge. Who do you address, to complain about a work of art?"
So when asking whether robots are a danger to art, it depends entirely on the notion of art you have, she says. "There will definitely be plenty of works created by AI in future, making decorative works, say to put in your kitchen or your living room."
But AI can assist in the creation of art, say both Zerr and Heesen. "An artist can frame and contextualise and present the work," says Heesen. Then AI acts as a helper, says Zerr. "And can also facilitate new art forms."
Helper, not replacer
You can see some of this in action already in Stuttgart's art museum, in an exhibition called "Shift: AI and a future community." On show are not only a talking Chinese sex doll or actress Marlene Dietrich as a deep fake, but also a series of faces of US activist and whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
The 30 masks were created by US artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg in "Probably Chelsea." They are "possible portraits" of the whistleblower generated algorithmically by an analysis of her DNA. Dewey-Hagborg is highlighting "just how many ways your DNA can be interpreted as data, and how subjective the act of reading DNA really is," says a statement on the artist's website.
The exhibition aims to investigate how "digital technology is permanently changing the idea of a community in which humans, nature and technology form a cooperative relationship," says the museum's website. AI already "influences, visibly or invisibly, political, economic and social processes" and has "long since arrived at the centre of society," the site says.
The works on show are complex and complicated, showing that AI has a long way to go before it is capable of moving beyond science and technology to create any kind of artistic quality and content.
Future forecast
The interactions between art and AI are in their early stages. "There's a general consensus that AI systems are not as advanced as what people are able to create or at least not yet I should say," says Ulrike Groos, director of the Stuttgart museum of art. But, she says, it has the potential.
Zerr outlines his image of the future. "The creative sector will have to undergo a fundamental change, in its processes and capabilities. These tools will soon eventually become a standard part of life, sooner or later." – dpa
