Can AI make art? Yes, according to the bitforms gallery in San Francisco. The exhibit “Artificial Imagination” will be on display until late December and will feature works created with or inspired by the generative AI system DALL-E, as well as other types of AI.
A user can type words into DALL-E and other similar systems like Stable Diffusion or Midjourney to get an image back.
Steven Sacks, who established the original bitforms gallery in New York in 2001 (the San Francisco location will open in 2020), has always collaborated with artists working at the intersection of art and technology.
However, according to CNN Business, this may be the first art show to focus on DALL-E, which was created by OpenAI, and it is the first one Sacks has presented that focuses so directly on work created with AI.
In the arts, using technologies such as 3D printing and Photoshop is commonplace. However, new text-to-image systems such as DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney can generate stunning images at breakneck speed, unlike anything seen in the art world before.
Millions of people have flocked to these AI systems within months, and they are already being used to create experimental films, magazine covers, and images to illustrate news stories.
While these systems are gaining traction, they are also causing controversy. For example, when a Midjourney-generated image recently won an art competition at the Colorado State Fair, it sparked outrage among artists.
For Sacks, generative AI systems like DALL-E are “just another tool,” noting that artists have used previous work to create new work in various ways throughout history.
“It’s a brilliant creative partner,” he said. “Artificial Imagination” includes artists who are well-known for using technology in their work, such as Refik Anadol, and those who are new to it.
According to Sacks, the exhibit, which is co-presented by bitforms and venture capital firm Day One Ventures, is an educational show about the state of DALL-E and how artists are utilizing AI.
The final piece comprises about 30 different generated images that were outpainted section by section — a process that uses AI to expand the image by adding more elements to it. Kamp also used Photoshop to make changes to the overall image.
DALL-E and other generative AI tools are being used to persuade people that art can be abundant.
“I wanted to just put it out there: Here is a range of artists, here are really different ways of presenting this kind of work, living with this kind of work, connecting with this kind of work,” Sacks said. “I wanted people to ask questions about it.”