history of Ai art

 History of AI Art from 1960s to 2023



AI art is a fascinating and rapidly-evolving field that has seen significant developments in the past few decades. From the early AI art projects of the 1960s and 1970s to the sophisticated deep learning algorithms of today, AI has transformed the way we think about art and creativity.

In this blog post, we will explore the modern history of AI art, from its early beginnings to its emergence as a mainstream art form. 


Early Developments in AI Art

The history of AI art dates back to the 1960s, when early pioneers in the field began exploring the potential of computers to create art. One of the earliest examples of AI art is Harold Cohen’s AARON, a computer program that was designed to create drawings and paintings. AARON used a set of rules and algorithms to generate abstract compositions, and was able to learn and adapt over time based on feedback from its creator.

Another early example of AI art is Vera Molnar’s Generative Compositions, a series of computer-generated drawings that were created using simple algorithms and geometric shapes. Molnar’s work paved the way for later artists who used computers to create abstract art and conceptual pieces.

The early AI art projects of the 1960s and 1970s were limited in their capabilities, as they were based on simple algorithms and rules. However, the advent of neural networks and machine learning in the 1980s and 1990s opened up new possibilities for AI art. Neural networks are computer systems that are designed to mimic the way the human brain works, and can learn and adapt based on data inputs. Machine learning, a subfield of AI, involves using algorithms and statistical models to allow computers to learn from data without being explicitly programmed.

These advances in AI technology enabled artists to create more complex and sophisticated artworks using AI. For example, artist Harold Cohen used neural networks and machine learning to enhance AARON’s capabilities, allowing it to create more varied and realistic artworks. Other artists, such as William Latham, used machine learning algorithms to generate 3D graphics and animations.

Overall, the early developments in AI art were driven by advances in AI technology, particularly neural networks and machine learning. These technologies opened up new possibilities for artists to create complex and varied artworks using computers. 

2014 – Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

GANs were developed in 2014 by researcher Ian Goodfellow who theorized that GANs could be the next step in the evolution of neural networks. Unlike Google DeepDream that works on pre-existing images, GANs can produce completely new images. GANs  work by training two neural networks in opposition. The first network, the generator, creates new examples, such as images, while the second network, the discriminator, evaluates them and tries to determine whether they are real or fake. The generator is trained to produce images that can fool the discriminator, while the discriminator is trained to correctly identify real and fake images. This competition continues until the generator is able to produce images that are indistinguishable from real ones. The result is a generative model that can produce new examples that are similar to the training data.

The most famous GAN-made artwork in contemporary art is the portrait “Portrait de Edmond de Belamy” made by French collective Obvious, which sold for $432,000 at Christie’s in 2018. 


The artists trained the algorithm on 15,000 portraits from 14th to 20th century and then asked it to generate its own portrait, attributed to the model. The portrait, resembling a Francis Bacon, sparked debate about the aesthetic and conceptual significance but its high price makes it a milestone in AI art history.

The development of PyTorch by Facebook in 2016 and TensorFlow by Google in 2015 revolutionized the deep learning industry by providing user-friendly APIs and powerful computation graphs. These libraries greatly streamlined the process of building and training GANs, enabling researchers and practitioners to easily experiment and develop new GAN architectures. The increased accessibility of GANs has resulted in a surge in popularity, lowering the barrier to entry for creating AI-generated images. However, early GANs faced limitations such as high computational cost and limited control over output, hindering their use for real-time applications. The solutions to these two challenges described in the next two sections  helped launch AI art into the mainstream.


2022: The Rise of AI Art into the Mainstream with Diffusion Models 

Diffusion models are a type of generative model that operate by transforming a simple random noise signal into more complex data, such as images. Unlike GANs, diffusion models use a continuous process to generate outputs, which makes them more stable and easier to control. Additionally, they offer advantages over GANs in terms of computational cost and performance, as they can generate high-quality images using relatively low computational resources. They also have the ability to generate diverse outputs without mode collapse, a common issue in GANs. These advantages have led to the increasing popularity of diffusion models in the creation of AI art, making them a promising alternative to GANs. 

The year 2022 will be remembered as the time when AI art became a mainstream form of art. In 2022, the Latent Diffusion models took the AI art world by storm, with Open AI’s Dall-e playing a major role in its adoption. The group of AI researchers from Stability AI made a significant contribution to popularizing AI art by making it accessible to the masses with their Stable Diffusion model, which is an evolution of the Latent Diffusion model and boasts performance comparable to Open AI Dall-e 2, but with the added benefit of being open-source.  The availability of open-source AI art models has spurred the development of web-based AI art generators, making it possible for anyone to create AI art.



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