Extra Credit Blog 2: LASER: De-colonizing AI

Event Blog: LASER: De-colonizing AI

I attended the event titled LASER: De-colonizing AI which discussed the issues that have evolved around the intersection of artificial intelligence and art. As many of us have seen through the internet are the new incredible things AI can do for art, from photo alteration and generative art. This event explored the concerns surrounding artificial intelligence as it relates to art and people wonder if there should be limits placed. There are also debates on if this artificial generation stunts creativity or if it acts as a spark for creativity, generating ideas to further human creation of art. Amir Baradaran called the art world a fragile ecosystem that AI is invading.

One of the major concerns of this AI generation of art is the eurocentricity of it all. There has been a problem with the eurocentricity of art long before AI, as most of all art included in museums are created by white men.

Some of the AI softwares that have been popular on the internet taking a person’s face and making it into the style of a painting. The problem however is that the software is generating art by using a large database that includes thousands of paintings made by Western Europeans and American artists, excluding a huge portion of the art world and misrepresenting what art should look like. This has resulted in altering the images of people of color not only to look like paintings, but altering their features into white ones.

AI is a new frontier that we all are navigating together and there is still a lot to learn about it.

Works Cited

Lopes, Pedro, et al. "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Art." Leonardo, vol. 52, no. 4, 2019, pp. 426-432.

Beloff, Laura. "From Automation to Autonomous Systems: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Artistic Practice." Technoetic Arts, vol. 17, no. 2, 2019, pp. 127-139.

McManus, Terence. "Artificial Intelligence and the Creation of Art." International Journal of Art and Design Education, vol. 38, no. 3, 2019, pp. 550-564.

O'Donoghue, Diarmuid, and Katherine Ellis. "AI-Generated Art: A Literature Review." Computers in Entertainment, vol. 17, no. 3, 2019, Article 6.

Zünd, Mike. "Artificial Intelligence and the Creative Arts: Recent Developments and Future Challenges." Foundations of Science, vol. 25, no. 3, 2020, pp. 507-526.