Move over selfie, artificial intelligence (AI) might just be creating your world-class portrait. His art practice follows two main paths. On one hand, Tresset presents theatrical installations in which robotic agents are actors. He also crafts the computational systems driving the robots so that their behavior can be perceived as artistic, expressive and even obsessive. These systems are influenced by research into actual human behavior--more specifically, how humans make marks or draw, how humans depict other humans, how humans perceive artwork, and how humans relate to robots.

Two robotic arms that each hold a pen begin to draw with short strokes on two sheets of paper-- two eyes, a mouth and the silhouette of a face. They portray the front and profile view of Eliseo Carrera Bustillo, a 26-year-old student sitting on a stool while two cameras observe and analyse him closely. Both machines imitate the style of their creator--the French artist Patrick Tresset--and it only takes half an hour to finish the portrait and sign it. Nowadays, more and more artificial intelligence systems paint pictures, compose music, create poetry and write novels. But what difference is there between a work created by a machine and by a human?

His art practice follows two main paths. On one hand, Tresset presents theatrical installations in which robotic agents are actors. He also crafts the computational systems driving the robots so that their behavior can be perceived as artistic, expressive and even obsessive. These systems are influenced by research into actual human behavior--more specifically, how humans make marks or draw, how humans depict other humans, how humans perceive artwork, and how humans relate to robots. Originally a painter, Tresset is part of a generation of artists coming out of Goldsmiths College's computing department.

Robots face some of the same problems in learning to draw as humans do, Tresset says. "When we draw, the difficulty is not in making the lines. The difficulty is in the perception of the subject and the perception of the drawing in progress." But sometimes, it may help to make it seem that the robot has difficulty in making the lines--Tresset has found that people feel more empathy for the machines when they make human-esque mistakes like crooked or tilted lines. Humans are inclined to want to identify with robots, especially those with faces: Give a person a bot, and he or she will probably name it. But why is that connection important in robots that draw?

Roboticist Patrick Tresset created a robot that autonomously draws an interpretation of what it "sees" via a camera. Tresset created his first artistic robot, Paul, during a bad case of artist's block, and has been upgrading the model ever since. Paul IX uses facial recognition technology to accurately represent a subject's features, but Paul's paintings aren't perfect replicas of the models--they reflect interpretation, artistic liberty, and, dare I say, personality. Tresset hopes to demonstrate that robots can autonomously create art that "comments on the human condition." Perhaps great artists are both made and born?