Mon 10 June 2019:
Wearing a white blouse and her dark hair hanging loose, Ai-Da looks like any artist at work as she studies her subject and puts pencil to paper. But the beeping from her bionic arm gives her away: Ai-Da is a robot.
Described as “the world’s first ultra-realistic AI humanoid robot artist”, Ai-Da opens her first solo exhibition of eight drawings, 20 paintings, four sculptures and more next week.
Ai-Da brings “a new voice” to the art world, her British inventor and gallery owner Aidan Meller says. Meller told Reuters at a preview that “the technological voice is the important one to focus on because it affects everybody. We’ve got a very clear message we want to explore: the uses and abuses of AI today, because this next decade is coming in dramatically and we’re concerned about that and we want to have ethical considerations in all of that.”
Named after British mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Ai-Da can draw from sight thanks to cameras in her eyeballs and AI algorithms created by scientists at the University of Oxford that help produce co-ordinates for her arm to create art.
As its built-in cameras recognize the human features, the robot Ai-Da makes eye contact, tracks people with its eyes, and imitates those standing in front of it by opening or closing its mouth.
If someone comes close to it, Ai-Da steps back, and blinks in an expression of shock. The exhibition is set to open on June 12 at Cambridge’s Barn Gallery at St John’s College.
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