Introduction: Making Art With AI

About: I'm a high school student trying to be an environmental engineer! Let's try some stuff out cause why not? :)

As we start to develop AI more and more, the use for AI also increases. Artificial intelligence has been able to make art from getting information from humans, but what about humans making art based on information from AI?

See what kind of creations you can make working with AI!

Supplies

The supplies vary based on what type of art you want to create with AI, but for this project I used the program Deep AI and Tinkercad to plan out the project.

For the actual model I used the following materials in the final project:

  • Cardboard
  • Old circuit board from smoke detector
  • Bottom of broken pencil sharpener
  • Sticky notes of various colors
  • Spaghettification of filament from 3D printer
  • Little bit of a wrapper
  • Paint
  • Hot glue/hot glue gun

*I did not end up using all of the materials in the photo!*

Step 1: Artificial Intelligence

For the sake of making art, you could use many different types of AI, such as an image generator and make art based off that. But for the sake of this project, I used an AI chat bot from Deep AI and asked it various questions to determine what and how I would make this project.

I first asked how both humans and AI should be represented, and what kind of a message this art could send. Next, I asked what kind of material I should make it out of. You can make it as specific or vague as you want!

Although, it is important to make sure the artificial intelligence is not just telling you what to do because both you and the AI should be working together!

Step 2: Optional Software Use

If it helps, you could try planning out your project in a program like Tinkercad like I did. My version is a very shape-based model with just the vague idea for me to jump off on. This is not a mandatory step, but it is a good way to plan out the look of the art.

Step 3: Material Gathering

Taking inspiration from the AI guidance and possibly the 3D model or sketch, look around!

If making a more 3D version like me, look in areas like junk drawers or materials you're about to throw away.

I happened to have two bins under my bed full of random things I have collected that reminded me of humans and artificial intelligence. When asking the AI about what it wanted to be made of, it suggested reusable material, so I tried to keep on theme with that with upcycling old materials I had collected.

If you are having trouble finding materials try grabbing random materials like markers or unusable bits of things and see how they look together.

Step 4: Assembly

Now, based on guidance from the AI at the start, you can make whatever painting/sculpture/art that feels right! From my materials I could see some shapes that started to go together, and just started to glue things together and seeing what felt right.

Once I had the basic shapes, I added detail like paint, position, and background. This is when everything really starts to come together!

Add what feels right and what fits with your theme. Don't forget it is ok to change and adapt your design as you go, art is like that!

Step 5: Conclusion

And there you have it! As dangerous as artificial intelligence is it is also helpful and interesting. Coming up with creative ways to use AI while also keeping the human element can be difficult but extremely rewarding!

Making art like this no matter how pretty or complicated it is can help us figure out our relationship with AI and ourselves as technology improves.

Thanks for reading!