AI meets Art. It’s magic, it’s fun.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are here to stay. They will carry out many repetitive tasks that we do every day. Achievements we are proud of, things that need skills and talent, things that we never anticipated a machine could do better than a human.

I've been playing around with AI/ML, StyleGAN, and BigGAN for the past five years, and it is quite a challenge to keep up with all the published papers. I guess AI is just too fast to keep up with it ;)

One platform I'm returning to is Artbreeder, and I am amazed at how good their BigGAN model became over the past three years. It almost feels that the AI is naturally learning how to create a base mesh, being very close to auto-generating depth maps, which are fantastic for animations, especially facial animations.

I have created all characters in this article within 20 minutes. They work for avatars and could serve as a base for overpaints, mood boards, character development (writers and artists), or even NFTs.

Does this mean Artists will become obsolete soon? Not at all. But I firmly believe there are and will be new opportunities for artists to diversify and specialize.

What skills are needed to create these characters? Besides clicking on a mouse button, you need to know what you want to achieve. But there are "happy little accidents" that open up new dimensions - I didn't plan to create these, but I had fun and got lost:

I will regularly post some of my recent tests to get me into a routine. I hope to inspire at least. If you want to try it: www.artbreeder.com (not sponsored, I think you have to say that nowadays).