AI artist at Venice Art Biennale: Ai-Da can paint like a human

At the 59th Venice Art Biennale, starting on April 22, art enthusiasts will be able to see something truly amazing: the robot lady painter Ai-Da.

Ai-Da is the world’s first humanoid robotic artist. The robot was first presented in 2019 at the University of Oxford. The special thing about Ai-Da: each painting is unique.

Ai-Da inventor and developer Aidan Meller explained at the launch: “The work he does is new every time. If you had me take your portrait twice, they would be completely different portraits.”

The performance at the Venice exhibition aims to showcase Ai-Da’s growing talent as an artist. She made the first drawings of her in 2019 at Oxford University.

He held a pencil in his robotic hand and used algorithms to draw pictures based on what he could see with his camera eyes. She collects information and processes it over and over again with the ever-growing algorithms, “her knowledge” of her, so to speak, and creates works of art.

His first self-portrait followed in 2021 and Venice will present his first paintings, made like their human counterparts with a real color palette and a new state-of-the-art arm. The highlight of the exhibition will be Ai-Da painting live. The robot will paint four portraits during the opening.

Almost Scary: Ai-Da can also speak and answer questions critically. At the beginning of April, the British newspaper “Guardian” asked the robot questions about its relationship with art.

For example, Ai-Da replied that she used machine learning to teach her how to paint and that “it’s different from humans.” Could you paint from the imagination? “I paint what I see. I think you can paint from imagination if you have an imagination. But I see things differently because I don’t have a conscience.”

Ai-Da poses very interesting questions. The art world is currently arguing about this: what is art really? What makes an artist? Is Ai-Da the intersection of art and artificial intelligence? Meller considers that this question is not important. His main concern is to stimulate a debate about technological progress, and not about what exactly art is.

By the way, Ai-Da herself has given an answer to the question of whether she creates art herself: “The answer to this question depends on what you mean by art,” the robot told The Guardian, adding: “I am a artist if art means sharing something about who we are and if we like it. Being an artist means illustrating the world around you”.

Whether the art world will see it that way remains to be seen…