Connect with us

Science & Technology

In the Age of AI Art, What Can Originality Look Like? | Eileen Isagon Skyers | TED

What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future, showing how AI can stretch…

Published

on

What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future, showing how AI can stretch the scope of human imagination and help create worlds we could never design alone.

If you love watching TED Talks like this one, become a TED Member to support our mission of spreading ideas:

Follow TED!
Twitter:
Instagram:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
TikTok:

The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Watch more:

TED’s videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: . For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at

#TED #TEDTalks #ai #aiart

Continue Reading
Advertisement
47 Comments

47 Comments

  1. Tonya Smith

    August 11, 2023 at 7:17 am

    AI can be incredible but nothing is like something created by human hands.

    • SasuKrow

      August 12, 2023 at 1:23 am

      And that’s why I like it, some of it is otherwordly and incomparable to what you’d expect to see from a human.

  2. lisa's_mixxle_finger

    August 11, 2023 at 7:18 am

    Just the thought of AI taking over all the human jobs is insane..

    • see yaa

      August 11, 2023 at 7:50 am

      Because it will still cost money and precious mineral resources to maintain, or because it is laughably unrealistic as far as functionality? 😂😅cheers🎉

  3. barabeke

    August 11, 2023 at 7:26 am

    This talk could have been actual few years ago. I am creating more mind blowing art than what you see in this video, today.

    • Ayush Singh

      August 11, 2023 at 7:38 am

      How do you know that they are Mind Blowing?

    • see yaa

      August 11, 2023 at 7:49 am

      Exactly. This is old news and people are already reverting to a time pre-internet.

    • Internet Hobo

      August 11, 2023 at 9:34 am

      Not only does this talk refer to technology created within the last 2 years, the digital art sanctuary thing you’re doing was being done by people like ViHart (especially using VR) to explore virtual spaces (museums, 5 dimensional space, etc…) several years ago. Way to put your foot in your mouth.

      “More mind blowing?” I get that taste in art is subjective, for example I think your art clashing with the environment looks bad, but I don’t think acting pompous is how you get people to appreciate yours. (Also, nice NFTs bud) 😅

      (Also, don’t worry, I didn’t give this guy a view: the timeline thumbnails was all I needed 😘)

    • barabeke

      August 12, 2023 at 10:58 am

      @Ayush Singh for their artistic value (I have thousands of unpublished works) but in some cases also for their photo realism (which can be judged not just from my work but also from some recent videos that can be found on YouTube)

  4. Jeri jayz

    August 11, 2023 at 7:28 am

    Welcome to the new age. Approved

  5. Andrea hodson

    August 11, 2023 at 7:31 am

    anything not done by chatgpt, which is plageurism isnt it?

  6. hangshingmuan

    August 11, 2023 at 7:32 am

    Human originality would be termed “humanorganic” in case AI have such a huge influence on originality in the future. What do you think ?

    • Samson Ward

      August 11, 2023 at 5:41 pm

      I think that’s a good choice 😢 *warning psychosocial networks disrupted, this is not a unique thought*

  7. kdoggdracul

    August 11, 2023 at 7:44 am

    Very unfortunate for an educational channel, to endorse the cheap but high-tech plagiarism by selling convenient self-narratives. There are no “AI Artists”. There may be AI “art”, if that’s to be considered art, depending on your definitions of it. But you cannot claim it as your own, in the same way you cannot claim your Google searches as your own. Blinded by these beliefs and self-narratives, AI stands as a real danger to the only heritage of this feeble (and often not very bright) human race: culture. When everything looks the same, nothing is interesting anymore. All the images you have presented, as interesting as they may prove for the first few seconds, get old really fast, and, quite frankly, look like someone was having a bad trip on magic mushrooms. What is the emotion, the message, the anything that may classify any of those images as artistic acts? Would you hang any of those images on your walls at home, or would you still prefer a Van Gogh print? Art is not just an image. Art is a process, a lifetime dedicated to a craft, and a message released upon the world. There is absolutely no originality and absolutely no message in AI “art”. Just beautiful nothings. (unfollow)

  8. Austin Denotter

    August 11, 2023 at 8:14 am

    Art is at its best when the government keeps his hands out of it

    • Internet Hobo

      August 11, 2023 at 9:57 am

      Ah! You mean like when art get used to lauder money for criminal activity, unregulated NFT scams, stolen digital art, and copyright abuse? 🙃

      I get that governments are faaar from perfect and private sales are good, but government regulations and enforced laws do help artists… when they aren’t helping the corpos 😅

  9. Esthe Cow

    August 11, 2023 at 8:25 am

    Nice talk with cherry picking only good the stuff of AI art, While we know most of its use was to steal non AI artists work and unethically resell their carbon copy without consent. I wonder what would these AI artists do if they had no more real artist product to feed their enigma machine that they dont even own.

    Note that i’m not against machine learning models but their users are very toxic (positivity) and unethical

    • Rey Fairburn

      August 11, 2023 at 10:43 am

      Yeah this talk really seems to label anyone rightfully criticizing ai art as “pessimists”. We need to create laws protecting human artists from having their work used to feed these AI programs without their consent.

    • þooþ

      August 13, 2023 at 9:11 am

      “unethically resell their carbon copy without consent”

      What..? No one’s using these models to recreate exact copies of the original training data

    • Gondor avalon

      August 14, 2023 at 11:31 am

      > *carbon copy*
      The only way to do this barring overtraining (which is undesirable to have) is image to image with low diffusion rate, which is a problem not with text to image generation, but … with how people use image to image!

  10. aceyage

    August 11, 2023 at 8:25 am

    It’s not that AI is a threat to human creativity. Humans will want to express themselves regardless. The danger is the extreme centralization of creative capital to a few Silicon Valley companies that create these models by using existing artwork from starving and non-starving artists. I rarely make comments about appearance, but this is the most well-spoken/dressed and beautiful woman that I have heard/seen in long time.

    • Cantrik Mangun Karsa

      August 12, 2023 at 11:55 am

      Yes / نعم 😊

  11. Sebastian Paris

    August 11, 2023 at 8:29 am

    TED IS DEAD
    It used to be a source of discoveries, inspiration, thoughts provoking and learning. This talk shows it’s content can now belong on Tik Tok
    Sad 😢

  12. Raulikien

    August 11, 2023 at 9:08 am

    Answer: you let the AI do it better than you. It has access to the full range of the near infinite possibilities of pixel arrangements and can combine any number of subspaces in it, you just guide it through it with the prompts.

  13. Bill Carroll

    August 11, 2023 at 9:16 am

    Do Neural networks use thousands or millions of images at a time?

    • Sownheard

      August 11, 2023 at 2:16 pm

      No 😂 that is not how it works.
      The model is 2GB.
      You can’t compress a billion images into 2GB

  14. Samuel Zev

    August 11, 2023 at 9:47 am

    While this talk of AI is taking place Skynet has entered the chat. Have fun before the real AI revolution begins

  15. Shahaf Yefet

    August 11, 2023 at 10:39 am

    Simple response: “originality” can look like effort ..

  16. Paul Higgins

    August 11, 2023 at 11:52 am

    There is nothing profound or meaningful happening inside these AI’s. The creation of Art requires above all intent and a desire to communicate- no such intent or desire exists in these machines- input the same prompt with the same seed value and they will give you more or less the same image over and over and over again- they will never grow weary of the repetition, never yearn to make something new- they are dead things and anyone who imagines that these dead things can be harnessed as engines of artistic inspiration are deluding themselves.

    The best that can be said of them is that they might function as very elaborate rorschach blots in onto which one may project one’s own ideas- but the notion that they represent some new frontier in the realms of artistic expression is laughable. Kaleidoscopes make pretty patterns too- they do not, however, make Art.

  17. All

    August 11, 2023 at 11:52 am

    very

  18. AlienToppedPancakes

    August 11, 2023 at 12:41 pm

    Screw this fluff piece! Nothing ethical about AI when it steals the data and allows corporations to downplay human artists.

  19. Art of the steel

    August 11, 2023 at 1:56 pm

    Collaborative Ai artist yet another title you give yourself to help you sleep at night and justify the use of a technology that makes creating art so much easier for you. OK, you trained Ai on thousands of your own images then call on that Ai to produce new images based on the images you fed it. It is still the Ai generating the images based on your work but without your input how come they don’t get that.

    • Gondor avalon

      August 14, 2023 at 11:29 am

      > *to help you sleep at night*
      Or maybe it’s just another name that sounded neat or sounded like it was more concise (IDK about the last).
      > * It is still the Ai generating the images based on your work*
      And? How is it a problem to use AI trained on your own work, especially if just as part of the process?

  20. ROMANUMERALZ

    August 11, 2023 at 3:50 pm

    Deception always comes gift wrapped. 🎁
    DO NOT BE DECEIVED 👹

  21. ridiculous P

    August 11, 2023 at 5:26 pm

    been thinking of creating my own paintings then selling them on ebay ,i know a bit about it all ,but my paintings will be nothimg but honest ,thats important

  22. Basma Basma

    August 12, 2023 at 8:34 am

    Can the Arabic translation be activated? ❤❤❤❤❤

  23. Cantrik Mangun Karsa

    August 12, 2023 at 11:54 am

    Thank you—for contribution 🙏🏻

  24. Kristian Sullivan

    August 12, 2023 at 6:53 pm

    The thought that AI art, or all forms of AI ‘creation’, is mere auto-referencing on a gigantic scale immediately, for me anyway, de-masks the whole thing. It suddenly took a massive leap backwards from a position of interest and intrigue for me to being almost entirely irrelevant. Art, design and creativity at their noble best have always been about the ability to pluck something out of nowhere, out of thin air that existed only in the mind of the brilliant and visionary. This is more like a child rumaging around in the toy chest of forgotten gifts and getting a cheap, momentary thrill from a refound item that was briefly desirable or popular. Art is never about an archive. It is always about what is next and what is unexpected. AI has a glorious future. Not in this area of human achievement.

  25. the-original-swimmer

    August 13, 2023 at 4:32 pm

    entered because of the title, stayed because her outfit ateee!! :p

  26. Rudy Ponzio

    August 13, 2023 at 7:02 pm

    For me… I put it this way. A.I. And Robots aren’t inherently bad. And won’t be our equal.
    How is it. ( That I can for the first time in my life ever doing it. ) I can Tell my desired texture of wide flat pasta noodles in a boiling pot of water.
    From scooping one up and dangling it from a wooden handle stainless steel stirring utensil, over 15 inches long ? And feel the exact desired texture from holding the wooden handle, because I chewed pasta before? And where did my desired texture come from? You get the full fledged connection to this video right?

  27. R W

    August 14, 2023 at 7:01 am

    She says, ” this ‘piece’ is produced by, (inset human name here).. But, my questions are; how old are these “artists”.. how many years did they study perfecting “their art”.. their medium? Because I’m an artist, who’s been playing around with Midjourny since the Beta and I know that “pieces” of equal quality can be prompted by an 11yr old wannabe accountant, in under 2 days of practice… The reality is this isn’t produced by a, (insert human name here)… It’s produced by an AI algorithm… She talks about curation of hundreds of images, a repetitive task greatly suited to… you guest it, AI!
    … Stop pretending that ‘Human digital art’ isn’t in intensive care, right now. The first to fall in two decade obliteration of human worth.

  28. R “P” W

    August 14, 2023 at 7:01 am

    She says, ” this ‘piece’ is produced by, (inset human name here).. But, my questions are; how old are these “artists”.. how many years did they study perfecting “their art”.. their medium? Because I’m an artist, who’s been playing around with Midjourny since the Beta and I know that “pieces” of equal quality can be prompted by an 11yr old wannabe accountant, in under 2 days of practice… The reality is this isn’t produced by a, (insert human name here)… It’s produced by an AI algorithm… She talks about curation of hundreds of images, a repetitive task greatly suited to… you guest it, AI!
    … Stop pretending that ‘Human digital art’ isn’t in intensive care, right now. The first to fall in two decade obliteration of human worth.

  29. Invox

    August 14, 2023 at 3:51 pm

    “Art” by definition is a HUMAN expression.
    What AI does is just combining numbers, it is WE that misslabel it as such.

  30. CSEP - Inspiring Keynote Speakers

    August 14, 2023 at 4:30 pm

    AI art is fascinating! It’s a blend of human creativity and technology, resulting in new and unique artworks. This makes us rethink what creativity means and how technology is shaping art. And we should talk about both the positive and negative sides of this new art form

  31. Cheersmo Dreams

    August 15, 2023 at 6:03 am

    AI creates images not art. Our inability to define art leads us into this silly conversation. Nevertheless the art industry will do it’s thing and put together marvelous exhibits that we can gather around, sip wine and prance around in various styles of blackware.

  32. Reality InFocus

    August 15, 2023 at 12:17 pm

    Man, this is a super video!! My main takeaway is that artists like Claire Silver ain’t just sticking to old-school methods. She’s out here mixing things up with AI, ‘collaborative AI artist’. It’s like she’s using the AI to make a connection between old-timey art and the crazy digital stuff of today. Real genius stuff, man.

  33. Max & Angel

    August 16, 2023 at 10:47 am

    Ai from strange lifeforms to imaginary influencer ai is a technology that is fascinating because we are loving things we can’t understand and now people can think of millions of images in one simple scan. Abstract piece by Sara Lady began as a digital painting.

Leave a Reply

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CNET

It’s just not fair…

How often do you charge your Magic Mouse? #apple #magicmouse #mouse

Published

on

How often do you charge your Magic Mouse? #apple #magicmouse #mouse

Continue Reading

CNET

Gaming with Mac in Apple M4 Processors

Playing Control and Wuthering Waves felt pretty smooth and fluid across each device, with the ray tracing on water and lighting looking especially impressive, even on a cartoony art-style like #WuWa. #gaming #macgaming #pcgaming #apple #wutheringwaves

Published

on

Playing Control and Wuthering Waves felt pretty smooth and fluid across each device, with the ray tracing on water and lighting looking especially impressive, even on a cartoony art-style like #WuWa. #gaming #macgaming #pcgaming #apple #wutheringwaves

Continue Reading

CNET

POV: You Have 30 Minutes

At least there was cake! #apple #pov #workhumor #journalism #socialmedia

Published

on

At least there was cake! #apple #pov #workhumor #journalism #socialmedia

Continue Reading

Trending