Many of us are not blessed with the abstract skills of a modern-day Picasso, nor can we recreate a sunlit countryside any further than putting blue in the sky and green for the ground. We know that our paintings will not appeal to connoisseurs, but what about an AI?
In a fun competition that has exploded in popularity recently, Paint.wtf challenges you to draw your best work of art in multiple themed categories, before having your master canvas judged by an AI. The rankings are then posted for each category, and it has gotten pretty hilarious.
With thought-provoking subject matters such as ‘draw a bumblebee that loves capitalism’ and ‘draw a giant panda made of dried seaweed’, the paintings are slightly different to your everyday art gallery.
Developed by roboflow and booste, the AI trawls through submissions and gives each a ranking based on its opinion of your work. As clever as it is, some have noted the judge needed some lessons in fine art when it first began.
Commenters on Reddit have noted that the AI appeared to favor simplistic colors and lines as opposed to anything particularly creative.
“Lol. I drew an upside down dinosaur which was actually rated lower than ‘just a line’” said u/serLundry.
Many went on to joke that it wasn’t simply a line, it was symbolism for greater meaning, the past, and a linking theme between all art. You can make your mind up on that.
Since then, the makers claim to have amended the algorithms to have a more traditionalist view of art, and the leaderboards have been filled with more inspired work.
For now, the AI is there purely for fun, but the creators are now working on an application programming interface (API) and the learned AI model will likely see more applications in the near future.
This isn't the first time AI have dabbled in art. Back in 2017, some researchers wanted to use AI to create works of art indistinguishable from human-made pieces, although in a slightly abstract and deviant style. By showing the algorithms thousands of pieces of art to teach it the different styles, the AI quickly learnt to create its own pieces from scratch. Impressively, when critics were asked to rate the pieces of art produced, not only could they not tell which was the AI's and which was human, the AI managed to be rated higher than it's competitors. So, maybe computers are even better at creative thinking than us mere mortals.
So go ahead, see how our AI overlords rate your work!
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