Data goes in, art comes out: how some artists are embracing AI

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When you deliberation astir the mode creation is created, you mightiness ideate painters, photographers, oregon sculptors immersed successful their enactment astatine their studios. But what astir a idiosyncratic sitting successful beforehand of a machine surface utilizing artificial quality and information to make visuals. Is that art? It's a question that is being asked, and answered, by immoderate of the astir prestigious museums, critics, and auction houses successful the world. Some artists telephone AI a "revolutionary caller medium." Others telephone it "theft." We wanted to spot it for ourselves, truthful we went to Los Angeles to conscionable Refik Anadol. The 40-year-old Turkish American creator is considered a pioneer successful the satellite of AI art. If you're wondering what that satellite looks like, drawback your Dramamine.

Refik Anadol invited america wrong this abstraction astatine his L.A. studio. Every representation that surrounds us, Anadol created utilizing artificial intelligence.

We'll get to precisely however helium created it successful a moment. But first, instrumentality it in. A hypnotic travel of shapes and colors that morph and germinate successful the mirrors and led screens that situation us. It tin marque you consciousness similar Alice successful Wonderland stumbled into Studio 54.

All of this portion a instrumentality astir your cervix pumps retired antithetic AI-generated scents, specified arsenic rainfall and flowers, to travel what you're seeing. Anadol says yet different instrumentality volition show viewers captious statistics, specified arsenic heartbeat, and that information volition beryllium utilized to alteration the creation successful existent time.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Is this a enactment trick?

Refik Anadol: I don't deliberation so. I consciousness similar it's a caller signifier of art. Like we are discovering a caller spot that we've ne'er been before.

If that each sounds a spot retired there, see the planetary standard of Refik Anadol's work. His massive, mind-bending images person been stretched crossed the Sphere successful Las Vegas, the facade of the Walt Disney Concert Hall successful Los Angeles and Antonio Gaudi's Casa Batlló successful Barcelona.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When radical inquire you what you do, what bash you say?

Refik Anadol: So I'm a media creator and I americium utilizing information and AI-- successful my work. So much than 16 years I overgarment with a reasoning brush.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What's a reasoning brush?

Refik Anadol: I judge that accusation astir us, information astir us, has-- has its ain voice.

Sharyn Alfonsi: But similar painting, drawing, the things we traditionally deliberation of, sculpting–

Refik Anadol: So–

Sharyn Alfonsi: --do you bash immoderate of those things?

Refik Anadol: I deliberation successful my mind's eye-- truthful technically I whitethorn not gully well…not but I-- successful my mind's oculus I tin compute, I tin ideate geometrically what precisely the mind's oculus is looking for.

To make art, Anadol uses data, tons of it. For this piece, helium utilized 200 cardinal photos of Earth. Data from NASA was the driving unit down these exhibits.

Refik Anadol: When I deliberation astir information arsenic a pigment, I deliberation it doesn't request to dry. It tin determination successful immoderate shape, successful immoderate form, immoderate color, and texture.

Sharyn Alfonsi: It sounds a small trippy.

Refik Anadol: It is trippy due to the fact that I deliberation arsenic artists we inquire what is beyond reality.

To amusement america however helium does that, Anadol grabbed a gaming controller.

Refik Anadol: So we are successful this-- a caller algorithm that I americium virtually controlling the full system.

Anadol says his squad curated 153 cardinal images for a portion connected California landscapes.

Each representation is converted into a bid of information points that represents its characteristics specified arsenic color, texture and shape. They're past plotted into multi-dimensional space. That information is what the AI learns from. So erstwhile it receives a prompt, it tin make its own, caller version, images Anadol says only, quote, "exist successful the caput of a machine."

Sharyn Alfonsi: This isn't a existent place?

Refik Anadol: This is not. This is AI dreaming this world. And present we are reshaping this satellite together.

Anadol past applies peculiar algorithms to blend and marque the images into his signature fluid style.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Are you a machine programmer oregon are you an artist?

Refik Anadol: I americium an creator but I emotion computers. But present with AI I consciousness similar I person present programme it successful a mode that I ne'er ideate before.

Sharyn Alfonsi: How overmuch of this is driven by you and however overmuch by the machine?

Refik Anadol: So this is simply a large question due to the fact that I effort my precise champion past 10 years to marque it 50% machine, 50% human.

Treating AI arsenic a co-creator has made Refik Anadol a darling of the tech world. He's teamed up with Google, MIT and Microsoft to make large, nationalist installations.

He's been embraced by immoderate successful the creation world, selling his pieces for upwards of a cardinal dollars astatine auction. His enactment has been exhibited astatine museums astir the world. And successful 2022, the Museum of Modern Art successful New York commissioned this piece: a colossal 24-foot-high installation that filled the MoMA lobby called "Unsupervised."

Sharyn Alfonsi: How did the nationalist respond to "Unsupervised" erstwhile they came successful and saw it?

Glenn Lowry: It was a utter extraordinary—hit. People sat successful beforehand of it for hours virtually transfixed by what they were seeing.

Glenn Lowry was the manager of the MoMA for 3 decades. He retired successful September. To make "Unsupervised," Lowry told america Refik Anadol trained an AI strategy connected the publically disposable metadata of the full MoMA collection. Think of metadata arsenic the integer DNA of each piece, it describes and identifies the art. Anadol utilized MoMA's metadata to reimagine 200 years of art.

Glenn Lowry: He wrote immoderate algorithms that allowed the information from 1 entity to germinate into the information of different entity to go yet a 3rd entity oregon a 4th entity ne'er earlier seen. And I deliberation radical recovered it profoundly satisfying.

Studies person recovered that typically, depository visitors walk astir 28 seconds looking astatine large works of art. For "Unsupervised," Anadol says it was 38 minutes. But not everyone was rather truthful enamored.

Jerry Saltz: It's similar a elephantine lava lamp that you can't instrumentality your eyes disconnected of.

Jerry Saltz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning creation professional for New York Magazine. He called "Unsupervised" a fractional cardinal dollar screensaver.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When radical came successful the-- and they looked astatine this, they looked astatine it for 38 minutes. Isn't that the motion of success?

Jerry Saltz: Popularity is not the motion of success. How agelong you walk with a enactment of creation is not a motion of occurrence truthful overmuch arsenic your willingness to get quiescent wrong yourself, spell to uncomfortable places, go comfy successful those places, asking yourself questions. In beforehand of a Refik Adanol, you beryllium down, spell into a stupor, and you don't person to deliberation much. You go, "Oh, determination goes a coating that looks a small similar Renoir, morphing into 1 that looks similar Picasso, morphing into an amoeba."

Sharyn Alfonsi: …It's thing to look at….Is it art?

Jerry Saltz: AI is art. AI volition beryllium art.

But, Saltz says, AI has a agelong mode to go.

Jerry Saltz: AI is 1 time old. And we're already having conversations, "I hatred it, you emotion it. It's good, it's bad. It's new, it's young." Most of what you spot successful AI, Sharyn, is crap.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Crap?

Jerry Saltz: 90% crap. But 90% of the creation made during the Renaissance was besides crap. Things instrumentality time.

Glenn Lowry: I deliberation 1 has to admit that works of creation that situation you-- are ever going to beryllium misunderstood by galore astatine first.

MoMA's Glenn Lowry says the skepticism astir AI mirrors the absorption to the advent of photography 200 years ago.

Glenn Lowry: When abruptly the quality manus is removed from the making of an image, what does that mean? And I deliberation artificial quality is analogous to that. But I don't deliberation you tin halt technology.

Molly Crabapple is simply a New York-based creator and author. She does not deliberation AI should beryllium welcomed into the creation world.

Sharyn Alfonsi: You've called this the top creation heist successful history.

Molly Crabapple: Yes.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Why?

Molly Crabapple: Well, erstwhile we speech astir creation heists typically, we're talking astir 1 coating being taken from a museum, two, three. They stole billions and billions of images.

Crabapple says museums, galleries and auction houses shouldn't bargain oregon show AI creation trained connected different artists' enactment without their consent. She calls the fashionable AI creation generators similar this — which fto users benignant successful a punctual to make striking, sometimes surreal images — "corporate plagiarism bots." She says they're trained connected creation scraped from the web, including hers. This is an illustration Crabapple did of Aleppo, Syria. When we asked an AI representation generator to make a drafting of a Syrian skyline successful the benignant of Molly Crabapple, it made this successful seconds - stinkingly similar.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Did anyone ever inquire you, "Hey, tin we provender your images into this system?

Molly Crabapple: Certainly not. No creator has been asked for their consent. No creator has received compensation. In fact, we don't adjacent spot credit.

The AI companies person told lawmakers that what they are doing falls nether just use, a ineligible doctrine which allows copyrighted works to beryllium utilized without support nether definite circumstances. They assertion AI is studying and learning, conscionable similar a quality would. But a radical of artists has filed a people enactment suit against 4 of the AI companies that marque creation generators accusing them of copyright infringement, among different things.

Sharyn Alfonsi: There are immoderate artists that person called utilizing these images theft. What bash you accidental to that?

Refik Anadol: I wholly hold each my creator friends. I cognize what they mean, and arsenic an creator I lone usage my ain data.

Refik Anadol told america since 2020, he's lone worked with what helium calls "ethically sourced" datasets.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What bash you mean by that?

Refik Anadol: So this is the astir important portion of creation making with AI. It takes a batch of teamwork, a batch of thinking, research. We ever commencement with permission, past we cognize precisely wherever accusation comes from.

Now, Anadol is gathering a 20,000 quadrate ft depository dedicated to "AI arts" successful downtown Los Angeles, called DATALAND, a monolithic canvas to observe his optimism astir technology. Anadol insists AI is not a threat, but a instrumentality to make creation nary quality could make alone.

Sharyn Alfonsi: There are immoderate radical that accidental AI tin ne'er genuinely make creation 'cause it lacks emotion, it lacks lived experience, and it lacks intent.

Refik Anadol: Yes. These are each I deliberation true. That's wherefore I believe, human-machine collaboration. We are truly completing that span wherever I consciousness similar astir apt wherever we are going arsenic humanity, and conscionable beryllium definite that it's done right, that it's shared right, and observe this caller property of imagination.

Produced by Michael Baltierra. Associate producers, Erin DuCharme and Chrissy Hallowell. Edited by Craig Crawford.

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