Can AI make better art than humans? We asked IBM’s Seth Dobrin
Artificial intelligence has permeated every industry and the world of arts and culture is no exception. In other words, AI art is about to explode.
AI text-to-image generators such as DALL-E or Midjourney have created remarkable visual works of art. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm with its ability to answer questions, write essays, and summarize texts, among other things. AI-generated art even exists exhibited in world famous museums.
These examples show how powerful generative AI can be and offer this pressing question: Is AI about to replace human artists?
Seth Dobrin, IBM’s first-ever Global Chief AI Officer, has an answer. We spoke to him at the TNW Conference 2022 and talked about the potential of computer-created art.
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If you want to see his predictions in full, watch the video at the top of this article. Alternatively you can check it out here.
AI-generated visual art already exists in various forms. There are examples of artists – like Refik Anadol – who are the actual creators, but use artificial intelligence to improve their artwork. There are also tools like DALL-E that are ‘coming up’, although it’s hard to say whether their works are really indistinguishable from humans.
Dobrin takes a similar view of news articles, noting that financial news is already generated automatically to some extent. And while he doesn’t believe AI-generated text is as compelling as a writer’s, he explained that GPT-3 and Large Language Models (LLMs) can generate stories that journalists can use as a starting point.
But when it comes to movies and novels, AI still has a long way to go. That’s because “AI really needs to learn emotion, really be able to simulate it and evoke empathy — better than it can today,” Dobrin said. He expects another five years for making new films and between five and ten years for film production.
But what is Dobrin’s prediction about classical music? And does he believe that AI will only empower humans in the creative process – or eventually replace them?
