While artificial intelligence can be creative, what's most compelling is the creative output when humans and machines collaborate, whether that's in art, music, dance, design, recipes, or publishing. Here we look at the way AI is a tool to augment human creativity rather than a replacement.

1. Can Machines And
Artificial Intelligence
Be Creative?

2. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
We know machines and artificial intelligence (AI) can be many things, but can they ever
really be creative? When I interviewed Professor Marcus du Sautoy, the author of The
Creativity Code, he shared that the role of AI is a “kind of catalyst to push our human
creativity.” It’s the machine and human collaboration that produces exciting results—
novel approaches and combinations that likely wouldn’t develop if either were working
alone.
Can Machines And Artificial Intelligence
Be Creative?

3. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Title
Text
IntroductionIntroduction
Instead of thinking about AI as replacing human creativity, it's beneficial to examine ways
that AI can be used as a tool to augment human creativity.
Here are several examples of how AI boosts the creativity of humans in art, music,
dance, design, recipe building, and publishing.
Can Machines And Artificial Intelligence
Be Creative?

4. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Art
In the world of visual art, AI is making an impact in many ways. It can alter existing art
such as the case when it made the Mona Lisa a living portrait a la Harry Potter, create
likenesses that appear to be real humans that can be found on the website
ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com and even create original works of art.
When Christie’s auctioned off a piece of AI artwork titled the Portrait of Edmond de
Belamy for $432,500, it became the first auction house to do so. The AI algorithm, a
generative adversarial network (GAN) developed by a Paris-based collective, that created
the art, was fed a data set of 15,000 portraits covering six centuries to inform its creativity.

5. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Art
Another development that blurs the boundaries of what it means to be an artist is Ai-Da,
the world’s first robot artist, who recently held her first solo exhibition. She is equipped
with facial recognition technology and a robotic arm system that’s powered by artificial
intelligence.
More eccentric art is also a capability of artificial intelligence. Algorithms can read recipes
and create images of what the final dish will look like. Dreamscope by Google uses
traditional images of people, places and things and runs them through a series of filters.
The output is truly original, albeit sometimes the stuff of nightmares.

6. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Music
If AI can enhance creativity in visual art, can it do the same for musicians? David Cope has
spent the last 30 years working on Experiments in Musical Intelligence or EMI. Cope is a
traditional musician and composer but turned to computers to help get past composer’s
block back in 1982. Since that time, his algorithms have produced numerous original
compositions in a variety of genres as well as created Emily Howell, an AI that can
compose music based on her own style rather than just replicate the styles of yesterday’s
composers.
In many cases, AI is a new collaborator for today’s popular musicians. Sony's Flow Machine
and IBM's Watson are just two of the tools music producers, YouTubers, and other artists
are relying on to churn out today's hits. Alex Da Kid, a Grammy-nominated producer, used
IBM’s Watson to inform his creative process. The AI analyzed the "emotional temperature"
of the time by scraping conversations, newspapers, and headlines over a five-year period.
Then Alex used the analytics to determine the theme for his next single.

7. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Music
Another tool that embraces human and machine collaboration, AIVA bills itself as a
“creative assistant for creative people” and uses AI and deep learning algorithms to help
compose music.
In addition to composing music, artificial intelligence is transforming the music industry in
a variety of ways from distribution to audio mastering and even creating virtual pop stars.
An auxuman singer called Yona, developed by Iranian electronica composer Ash Koosha,
creates and performs music such as the song Oblivious through AI algorithms.

8. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Dance and Choreography
A powerful way dance choreographers have been able to break out of their regular
patterns is to use artificial intelligence as a collaborator. Wayne McGregor, the award-
winning British choreographer and director, is known for using technology in his work and
is particularly fascinated by how AI could enhance what is done with the choreography in
a project with Google Arts & Culture Lab. Hundreds of hours of video footage of dancers
representing individual styles were fed into the algorithm. The AI then went to work and
"learned how to dance.” The goal is not to replace the choreographer but to efficiently
iterate and develop different choreography options.

9. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
AI Augmented Design
Another creative endeavor AI is proving to be adept at is commercial design.
In a collaboration between French designer Philippe Starck, Kartell, and Autodesk, a 3D
software company, the first “chair designed using artificial intelligence”
and put into production was presented at Milan Design Week. The Chair Project
is another collaboration that explores co-creativity between people
and machines.

10. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Recipes
The creativity of AI is also transforming the kitchen not only by altering longstanding
recipes but also creating entirely new food combinations in collaborations with some of
the biggest names in the food industry. Our favorite libations might also get an AI
makeover. You can now pre-order AI-developed whiskey. Brewmasters’ decisions are also
being informed by artificial intelligence. MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory (CSAIL) is making use of all those photos of the food that we post on social
media. By using computer vision, these food photos are being analyzed to better
understand people’s eating habits as well as to suggest recipes with the food that is
pictured.

11. © 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Write Novels and Articles
Even though the amount of written material to inform artificial intelligence algorithms is
voluminous, writing has been a challenging skill for AI to acquire. Although AI has been
most successful in generating short-form formulaic content such as journalism "who, what,
where, and when stories," its skills continue to grow. AI has now written a novel, and
although neural networks created what many might find a weird read, it was still able to
do it. And, with the announcement a Japanese AI program’s short-form novel almost won
a national literary prize, it’s easy to see how it won’t be long before AI can compete with
humans to write compelling pieces of content. Kopan Page published Superhuman
Innovation, a book not only about artificial intelligence but was co-written by AI.
PoemPortraits is another example of AI and human collaboration where you can provide
the algorithm with a single word that it will use to generate a short poem.
As the world of AI and human creativity continue to expand, it’s time to stop worrying
about if AI can be creative, but how the human and machine world can intersect for
creative collaborations that have never been dreamt of before.

12. © 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2018 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2019 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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