In recent years, technology has drastically evolved. Today, there are robot butlers/assistants to help you with household chores, surveillance robot dogs to help keep you safe, chief robots that cook and clean for you, and even robots that dance to the Contours!
Now we can add a robot artist to that list too. Meet Ai-Da – the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist. Developed in 2019 by engineers at the University of Leeds and scientists at the University of Oxford, this life-size robot uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make paintings, drawings, and sculptures.
The creators claim that the automated artist can draw real people using its camera eye and a pencil in hand. Ai-Da starts by looking into the mirror in front of her via the camera-eyes. It then uses algorithms to program a visual representation of her face into coordinates. Finally, the robot’s hands calculate a virtual path, representing these coordinates on paper or canvas.
Ai-Da (named after the 19th-century scientist and mathematician Ada Lovelace) is the brainchild of British inventor and owner of the Oxford art gallery Aidan Meller and art curator Lucy Seal.
We live in a culture of selfies, but we are giving our data to the tech giants, who use it to predict our behavior. Through technology, we outsource our own decisions. The work invites us to think about artificial intelligence, technological uses, and abuses in today’s world.
Between May and June this year, the robot’s self-portraits, made with practically no human intervention, will be exhibited at London’s Design Museum. However, this would be Ai-Da’s second exhibition. The robot showcased its work in 2020 for the first time and explored whether AI should own its own intellectual property.
