AI generated art looks UnReal… now what?
The UnRealArt exhibition in Amsterdam explores the questions raised by the latest innovations in AI art.
Artworks generated by Artificial Intelligence have been around for a while, with Christie’s selling an AI-generated portrait for $423k back in 2018. In recent months however, text-to-image tools have become available to a much wider public, creating a tsunami of new “artworks”.
Creative arts such as drawing, painting and writing have long required a high level of skill. AI tools such as MidJourney and DALL-E 2 are allowing anyone with an idea to simply describe it in a short prompt and see it come to live within seconds.
The ease with which anyone can now create a wide range of works raises some interesting questions. Such as:
- What is creativity?
- Who is the author; the computer or the prompt writer?
- How will this technology change the creative arts?
- How can these tools be used for good or for bad?
The UnRealArt exhibition is designed to let the visitor explore these questions themselves.
The UnRealArt exhibition shows hundreds of AI generated works by multiple “prompt writers” in a wide variety of styles ranging from photorealistic to abstract, classical to modern.
To experience how simple and fast the current tools are, visitors are also able to provide their own prompts and generate new artworks on the spot, which may be included in the exhibition.
All the works are also available at https://un-real-art.com, where they are available for purchase as NFTs.
The UnRealArt exhibition opening is at Treehouse NDSM unit M3 on the 16th of September from 4 to 9 pm. The exhibition will be open daily from 1 to 7 pm until the 25th.