Technology has made such remarkable advances in recent years that today it is already possible to speak of robots that dance or even cook.
Developed in 2019 by scientists at the University of Oxford and engineers at the University of Leeds, Ai-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist. Thanks to artificial intelligence, this life-size robot can make drawings, paintings, and sculptures.
The robot artist will exhibit a series of self-portraits that she created by looking into a mirror using cameras in her eyes. Her art, made with practically no human intervention, will be displayed at the Design Museum in London.
Ai-Da is named after the 19th-century mathematician and scientist Ada Lovelace. According to its creators, the automated artist is capable of drawing real people using its camera eye and a pencil in hand.
She ‘looks’ in the mirror in front of her through the camera-eyes. With the help of algorithms, it then programs a visual representation of her face into coordinates. The robot’s hands calculate a virtual route, allowing it to represent these coordinates on the canvas.
The idea for Ai-Da came from the owner of the Oxford Art Gallery, Aidan Meller, and the 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,” Seal said in an interview with The Sunday Times. “The work invites us to think about artificial intelligence, technological uses, and abuses in today’s world.“
The robot’s self-portraits will be exhibited at the Design Museum in London between May and June, subject to COVID restrictions at the time. However, this would be the second exhibition. In 2020, the robot showcased its work and explored whether artificial intelligence should own its intellectual property in the future.
