This Robot Artist Just Became the First to Stage a Solo Exhibition. What Does That Say About Creativity?

Standing in a wood-paneled room at the University of Oxford, surrounded by her artwork, Ai-Da looks out at her creations. "I want people to know that our times are powerful times," she says slowly, pausing between sentences. Like many artists, she wants her work to promote discussion. And yet unlike other artists, Ai-Da tells us with a blank expression and glassy eyes that only blink occasionally, she does not have consciousness, thoughts and feelings. Ai-Da's creators bill her as the world's first robot artist, and she's the latest AI innovation to blur the boundary between machine and artist; a vision of the future suddenly becoming part of our present.