AI = ARTificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping into more and more areas of life as a so-called enabling technology, including creative and artistic areas. AI not only composes music and writes entire books, such systems have long been capable of generating photorealistic-looking images based on a description or rough hand sketch, for example. Deep fakes are one of the downsides of the AI coin.

This year, for the first time, submissions to the Blende photo competition will be analyzed and evaluated with the help of artificial intelligence. For this purpose, the Pattern Recognition Company with its Excire technology could be won as a partner.

This AI-based photo management software can recognize the content of photos and their properties using artificial intelligence, including, for example, whether a photo has a symmetrical composition or vanishing lines.

As a curator and juror at photo competitions, however, one thing is certain, at least for me: images are not to be evaluated solely from objective points of view - they are always also a question of individual perception.

In this context, the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) is difficult to define simply because there is already a lack of a precise definition of "intelligence". Actually, AI only refers to the attempt to emulate certain decision-making structures of humans, so that a device or an application can handle problems relatively independently. Intelligent behavior is thus only simulated in the process.

The question of the authorship of a work of art seems to be open in the use of AI in creative processes. For the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one thing is certain: "AI can create, but it is not creative." Matthias Röder, who led a team that wanted to complete Beethoven's 10th Symphony with AI help, speaks of a "collaboration between man and machine."

PHOTOPIA Hamburg will provide information about the role of AI in imaging not only at the Summit from October 13 to 16, but also in its online community PHOTOPIA 365, where leading experts will discuss AI & imaging in an online Tech Talk end of August. The PHOTOPIA Community offers this and other top topics online at:

www.photopia-hamburg.com