This morning the Supreme Court denied cert in the AI copyright case Thaler v. Perlmutter, with no dissent noted. A computer scientist had listed his AI system as the sole author of an artwork and tried to copyright it. Every court said no and that the Copyright Act requires a human author. The Supremes let this judgment stand. The creative world will treat this as a victory. Human authorship … [Read more...]
When “Better Than” meets “Good Enough”
Maybe you've seen the video below this week? It features the latest robotics by a Chinese robotics firm harnessed for a demonstration at this year's Spring Festival Gala. Give it a minute. I'll wait. Having seen the videos of dancing robots by Boston Robotics at MIT, I'm blown away by this. Also unsettled. The robots are incredible. And also: are they? What does incredible even mean here? … [Read more...]
Old Laws, New Ghosts: Why Artists are losing the Battle for AI
For a while now, creative industries have been locked in a state of high-alert, cycling between existential dread and a weary, cynical acknowledgment that AI will change everything. Increasingly, among many, there's a growing and reflexive rejection of AI. Surely anyone who cares a whit about aesthetic value has a visceral revulsion to "AI slop," the uncanny, high-gloss imagery that feels like … [Read more...]
An AI “Digital Twin” for the Performing Arts
A few weeks ago, I wrote about "speaking to the art" in museums—using AI to turn passive observation of artwork into an active, contextual dialogue, a way for visitors to find what resonates with them and explore more meaningfully. It is an idea about deepening the experience once the visitor is already in the room. The performing arts face a bigger challenge, before anyone enters the concert … [Read more...]
AI that turns Museums into Conversations: The Digital Twin
Discussion about AI and the arts can be abstract, both on the up- and downsides. I'd like to offer a concrete potential use that could be transformative. This one is for museums. Next week I'll offer an idea for performing arts. Arguably, one of the biggest transformations in the arts over the past thirty years has been the shift in relationship between artists, institutions and their … [Read more...]
The Disney/OpenAI Deal: How the Creative Landscape is being Rewritten for Us All
Disney’s deal with OpenAI last week got a lot of attention because one of America's biggest most-storied legacy content companies finally made a big bet on AI. There are, however, clues in the deal that put into sharp focus what's really at stake. This is about much more than a brand giant licensing its IP to an AI company. The deal was announced as Disney's $1 billion “strategic investment” in … [Read more...]
The AI that has Colonized our Creativity
Everyone's talking about AI, and you're being pestered to use it every time you open your phone. But are you aware the extent that AI has taken over how much of what you see and hear online? A study by Five Percent reported a few weeks ago that 52 percent of all new text online is now generated by AI. Seventy-four percent of all writing online now shows signs of "involvement" of AI. The French … [Read more...]
Not Really a Manifesto, I guess, but Perhaps a Framework for Thinking about AI and Art…
Everywhere we look, we're confronted now with AI. Or at least the claims of AI. Your WORD document offers to draft something for you. Your GMail promises to better organize your inbox. Your Reels and TikToks are flooded with annoying ludicrous AI video. AI promises to change everything. Even if you don't want it to. But there probably isn't anyone in creative industries not focused on the … [Read more...]
How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art
For all of the explosion of data in the past couple of decades, it's remarkable how disconnected and crudely measured much of the world around us still is. Weather forecasts, for example, have improved enormously in recent years, yet still aren't reliably accurate. The problem has been three-fold -- not enough ability to measure, incomplete data, and not enough computing power to make sense of the … [Read more...]
The Essential AI: Translating the Art of What We See, Hear and Experience
AI is getting very good at translating text and speech from one language to another, transposing not just words, but also meaning, and in real time. I previously wrote about the implications for opening up the world's culture from behind language barriers (for example, only three percent of the world's literature is translated into English). But in thinking about ways to explain the conceptual … [Read more...]