Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1328692
OPINION 14.01.2021 Alexiei Dingli Prof Alexiei Dingli is a Professor of AI at the University of Malta and has been conducting research and working in the field of AI for more than two decades, assisting different companies to implement AI solutions. He forms part of the Malta.AI task-force, set up by the Maltese government, aimed at making Malta one of the top AI countries in the world H uman creativity seems to be the last frontier for Artificial Intel- ligence (AI). Many people claim that AI is good at various things, it excels way beyond human expectations, but it will be challenging to exhibit creativity. e creative process is still enshrined in mystery. We can use techniques to culti- vate innovative thoughts, but in the end, we are not entirely sure how it happens. is lack of understanding regarding our own biological processes makes it hard for scientists to replicate them on a ma- chine. Notwithstanding these limitations, we are not that far in creating innovative masterpieces using AI. When it comes to textual content, AI is extremely good at processing words. We can list various instances in the past, where AI poetry was indistinguishable from poems created by humans. It's cu- rious to note that in 2016, a text entitled "e day a computer writes a novel" was submitted to a short-story competition in Japan. e novel follows a computer program as it realizes its capabilities as a writer while abandoning its pre-pro- grammed duties. e text was entirely written using an AI, and it managed to pass the first round of the competition. Paintings too are being produced by an AI. In 2018, Christie's Auction House received a painting entitled the "Portrait of Edmond De Belamy". e incredible thing about it was that it was created by an AI system using a process which mimics human cogni- tion. e AI was initially exposed to hundreds of paintings having a similar style, and then it was asked to gener- ate hundreds of potential pictures. e image which fitted the genre but which was also substantially different from the rest was eventually chosen. Even though its creators initially thought they might make a few thousand dollars out of it, in actual fact, the painting was sold for close to half a million dollars and is today considered as being the first artwork created by a machine. e creation of digital music or even songs using AI has been examined for quite a while. Music is relatively straightforward since the system can get inspiration from the various tunes which are available. In fact, there have been many attempts in recent years to create AI tunes. An exciting project called "Feedback Loops" by King's Col- lege in the UK uses an AI to look at a dancer and interpret her moves in the form of a melody. But creating an actu- al song with words is a totally different story. A few months back, the Univer- sity of Toronto created an AI system whose task was to listen to 100 hours of online Christmas music and compose the first AI Christmas carol. e re- sult was described as somewhat bland, off-festival and unsettling. So it will be quite a while before AI topples Mariah Carrey from the Top 10 with its first Christmas hit. Dance and theatre too, are part of AI's repertoire. We have seen various shows where AI actively participat- ed in the performance. e University of Malta had created virtual avatars to dance with a human dancer. For New Year's Eve 2020, Boston Dynamics- the company which produces the most ad- vanced robots in the world, released a unique choreography. Four of its robots where seen performing dance moves to e Contours' hit "Do you love me." e result was something rather remarka- ble and beyond what most people are capable of achieving. More impressive is maybe the drone display that uses an army of around 500 drones to cre- ate moving 3D shapes in the sky. ey were used to celebrate the Scottish New Year's Eve in 2020 and other major worldwide events. eatre backdrops too are today gen- erated by an AI. Manipulated images have been around for years. Photoshop (one of the most effective programs used to edit pictures) can modify exist- ing scenes or even create fake ones with some effort. However, just last year, Ni- vidia announced GauGAN, an impres- sive AI system capable of converting children like scribbles into high-reso- lution photos. A simple line with a cir- cle changes into a realistic picture of a waterfall next to a lake. us creating high-resolution, photorealistic back- drops on the fly. Computer-Generated Imagery (or CGI) has been extensively used in mov- ies to create all sorts of reconstructions from catastrophic disasters to animated characters. e latest fad seems to be in the creation of virtual actors. ese actors are meant to replace the real actors who might be too expensive to work with and do not follow the di- rector's instructions to the letter. In some cases, they are used instead of actors who died or had become too old for the part. e mythical actor James Dean, who died more than 60 years ago, is said to star in a movie called "Finding Jack". In the Star Wars movie "Rogue One", since Carrie Fisher (the original actress of Princess Leia) had aged, a digital body for the young Princess was created, and her facial expressions kept. AI was then used to simply fill in the dots. So in synthesis, AI can either be the ingenious creator of art or merely a tool used by the artist. Of course, this raises a lot of questions like who gets cred- it for AI art? Is it the program? But it has no legal entity! What about the pro- grammer? e programmer created the algo- rithm, and it can direct the AI to ac- quire new knowledge. But like a master with his apprentice, it does not deter- mine what is being learnt! Of course, this debate has no con- clusion and will keep on raging for the coming years. But we should approach it with an open viewpoint, embrace technology, and accept that we can reach new unimaginable heights by combining AI with the arts. Will AI replace our artists any time soon? Ai-Da Robot with a painting created by her response to an oak tree