Making Friends with AI

Using AI as a perception-altering drug

Four AI art techniques to help bring out your creativity

There I was in Amsterdam, thinking about ways to alter the mind, augment perception, overcome the limitations of human memory, see the past and present simultaneously… and I know what you’re thinking: drugs, right? Guess again! I’m talking about AI for artists.

This article is a look at the nature of machine-augmented art and a brief introduction to 4 of the most popular AI art techniques.

To art is human

If you want to cause a reliable spike in my blood pressure, utter a gratuitously anthropomorphized sentence about AI in my vicinity. You can probably do it without even trying. Just pull up an AI art-icle at random, for example AI Art at Christie’s Sells for $432,500, and start reading out loud: “Last Friday, a portrait produced by artificial intelligence was hanging at Christie’s New York opposite an Andy Warhol print…” (Meanwhile, I’m turning an alarming shade of puce.)

“Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy,” by the French art collective Obvious, sold for $432,500. Credit: Christie’s