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Ai-Da is the world's first ultra-realistic artist robot. She draws using cameras in her eyes, her AI algorithms, and her robotic arm. Created in February 2019, she had her first solo show at the University of Oxford, 'Unsecured Futures', where her art encouraged viewers to think about our rapidly changing world. She has since traveled and exhibited work internationally and had her first show in a major museum, the Design Museum, in 2021. She continues to create art that challenges our notions of creativity in a post-humanist era.
Today, a dominant mindset is that of humanism, where art is an entirely human affair, stemming from human agency. However, current thinking suggests we are edging away from humanism, into a time where machines and algorithms influence our behavior to a point where our 'agency' isn't just our own. It is starting to get outsourced to the decisions and suggestions of algorithms, and complete human autonomy starts to look less robust. Ai-Da creates art because art no longer has to be restrained by the requirement of human agency alone.
However, there is a dilemma in the art world: can Ai-Da's creations be considered art? If she is only capable of drawing inspiration from what already exists, can she truly be considered an artist?
With rapidly developing artificial intelligence, growing accessibility to supercomputers, and machine learning on the up, Ai-Da – named after the computing pioneer Ada Lovelace – exists as a "comment and critique" on rapid technological change.
Last year, she became the first humanoid robot to create a self-portrait. In other words, a robot with no "self" was able to create a self-portrait. "This is an important moment for AI art. Ai-Da's works raise questions about whether robots can genuinely be creative," Priya Khanchandani, Head of Curatorial at The Design Museum in London, said in a statement.
