Music and painting were the dominant topics of August – at least according to the latest issue of Tooploox CS and AI news.
Artificial intelligence was painting, winning contests, writing lyrics, and even dancing with moves like Jagger.
AI won an art contest, and artists were enraged
It was not AI per se, but the artist who used an AI-powered tool, to be precise. Yet the controversy sparks on undiminished.
Jason M. Allen, the contest winner, used Midjourney – an AI-powered system designed to deliver detailed images from text prompts. The system can generate basically anything, using a variety of styles, starting from a preschooler’s painting of a house with a tree, to surreal images of unknown worlds.
The system generated an image that was later used in the contest which Allen won, claiming both the prize and the fame. Yet controversy sparked over whether it is fair to allow participants to submit paintings and works of art created by machines. Moreso – can something produced by a machine be considered art?
These questions are likely to emerge more frequently in the future. The full story can be found on CNN.
AI rapper dropped by the label for racial stereotyping
Celebrities get drunk, spark controversies, and are sometimes risky partners to do business with. But the cyber-celebrities, like Hatsune Miku or FN Meka, as generated by computers and powered by digital technology, were thought to be more predictable and controllable.
Not as such, it appears. The Capitol Music Group has recently cut all ties with FN Meka for spreading racial stereotypes and its usage of racist slurs. The digital musician has more than 500,000 monthly Spotify subscribers, 220,000 Instagram followers, and over a billion views of its TikTok account every month.
Apart from cutting ties, the label has also issued an apology letter pointing out its “insensitivity” and the fact that “there were not enough questions asked” before signing the contract.
The full story can be found on BBC.
AI got to move like Jagger
Moves like Jagger were made immortal both by Maroon 5 and Mick Jagger himself. Yet is it possible to teach robots how to move like Jagger? Microsoft shows us that yes, it is.
The research aimed to teach a digital humanoid to perform moves and dance in a way shown in motion capture clips. The researchers used reinforcement learning to train the agent to mimic the displayed moves.
While being a lot of fun, making digital entities copy moves from motion capture video is also both challenging and of great significance when it comes to controlling humanoid robots in the future.
The whole sum of the research can be found on the Microsoft blog.
Dall-e shows “outpaints”
Anyone who ever wondered where “the girl with a pearl earring” is standing can find answers in the recent application of DALL-e. The system can be used to broaden the frames of an original painting and see what is (or what AI considers most probable to be) in the world beyond the frames.
The system takes into account pre-existing elements and creates additions consistent with the presented style and aesthetic. With this, outpainting will not place the Mona Lisa in a spaceship or the girl with a pearl earring near a modern-day dishwasher.
More information about the system, its applications, and ways outpainting is done can be found in OpenAI’s blog.
Read also: Benefits of Machine Learning for Companies
