Advances in imaging technology and especially CV and AI have, for decades, benefited nearly every scientific and engineering discipline, including medicine, geology, biology, chemistry, and psychology. Consider that works of art bear the most memorable and important images ever created by humans, and many works themselves are exceedingly valuable--not just financially but culturally. It is natural, then, that computer methods, properly guided by scholars' knowledge of history and context, should be of service in the humanistic studies of art as well. In fact, in the past few years, rigorous automated image analysis has assisted some art historians, critics, and connoisseurs in their scholarly studies of fine-art paintings and drawings. Such rigorous computer image analysis of fine art is rather different from traditional "digital humanities," which has generally concentrated on digital methods of capture and display but where the fundamental analyses and interpretations are still performed by human scholars and connoisseurs.38

People consider creativity to be inherently human. However, artificial intelligence (AI) has reached the stage where it can be creative as well. A recent competition attracted anger from artists after it awarded a prize to an artwork created by an AI model known as Midjourney. And such software is now freely available thanks to the release of a similar model called Stable Diffusion, which is the most efficient of its kind to date. Unions of creative practitioners such as Stop AI Stealing the Show have for some time been raising concerns about the use of AI in creative fields.

For the longest time, creativity was believed to be exclusive to the human mind. Artificial intelligence is now redefining'artists.' Applications to develop generative architecture algorithms create exciting work like the Digital Grotesque or AI-generated paintings filled with colours according to one's emotions. These pieces are then sold for record-breaking prices. Additionally, artificial intelligence can produce an artistic impression of photographs using neural style transfer apps like Prisma. Algorithmic art thus can be widely defined as an art generated using a set of instructions, usually using a computer.

An AI expert shares a painting created by an algorithm at the Art and AI International Forum in Yangpu District. China's first art and artificial intelligence lab was launched in Yangpu District Thursday to study how smart algorithms can be used to create art. The Art & Artificial Intelligence Lab (AAI) was unveiled at the Tongji University College of Design and Innovation, gathering the world's leading AI scientists and artists. "Art is about discovery, inspiration and awakening, while AI is about to change the world," Lou Yongqi, vice president of Tongji and dean of the college of design and innovation, told the Art and AI International Forum at the college. "Before the world is to be changed, we need a new round of inspiration led by art."

Take a minute and Google "artificial intelligence art." You might be surprised with your search results, some of which will resemble fine art portraits. Do these pieces of synthetic art belong in a museum? The increased use of artificial intelligence in art is leading people to question what qualifies and what does not. Artificial intelligence art is not just limited to visuals -- computers have been able to generate poetry, book chapters (albeit nonsensical) and Spotify playlists too.

AI-powered robo-painters are getting somewhat better at ripping off masterpieces, judging by the following fresh research. A team of academics at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Princeton University in America, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, have crafted a new system dubbed RePrint. It's split into two parts: a 3D printer that outputs layers of resin ink, and a trained neural network. When shown a photo of an oil painting, the system identifies the overall layout of the image, adjusts the lighting to compensate for whatever conditions the input picture was taken, and then predicts which colours are the right ones to mix and how to apply them to recreate the work using the printer. The key thing here is to mechanically produce a painting based on a digital snap, mixing and daubing the inks as necessary, imperfections and all.

Deep learning is changing the way we use and think about machines. Current incarnations are better than humans at all kinds of tasks, from chess and Go to face recognition and object recognition. In particular, humans have the extraordinary ability to constantly update their memories with the most important knowledge while overwriting information that is no longer useful. The world provides a never-ending source of data, much of which is irrelevant to the tricky business of survival, and most of which is impossible to store in a limited memory. So humans and other creatures have evolved ways to retain important skills while forgetting irrelevant ones.

The cellist Jan Vogler famously claimed that art is what makes us human. But what if machines start making art too? Here's an example of a piece of art made by an artificial intelligence (AI): On the right side of the picture is a computer running an AI that has been trained with images of graffiti. It controls a plotting head that sprays water onto concrete blocks, on the left. The resulting patterns are a form of computer-generated art. Is this fine art in the true sense?

In March 2016, Alphabet's DeepMind research group set a milestone in artificial intelligence when its AlphaGo program defeated professional Go player Lee Sedol, then fifth-ranked in the world, at the complex board game Go. Now China's Tencent is claiming a milestone of its own in Go--and China's ambitions in artificial intelligence. Last week, the company's Fine Art program defeated China's top professional Ke Jie, despite giving him a significant head start. Ke recently slipped to number two in the world, after holding the top spot for three years. Fine Art's victory won notice in the world of Go because it helps illustrate the gulf that has opened between human and machine players of the complex boardgame.

Deep learning is changing the way we use and think about machines. Current incarnations are better than humans at all kinds of tasks, from chess and Go to face recognition and object recognition. In particular, humans have the extraordinary ability to constantly update their memories with the most important knowledge while overwriting information that is no longer useful. The world provides a never-ending source of data, much of which is irrelevant to the tricky business of survival, and most of which is impossible to store in a limited memory. So humans and other creatures have evolved ways to retain important skills while forgetting irrelevant ones.