An AI drew my picture | Hacker News Reader

An AI drew my picture

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39 pointswillswire26 comments

Not that pen plotting and image vectorization isn’t cool, but where is the AI?

Agree, have not been able to find anything that indicates system is using any form of AI such as genetic algorithms, machine learning, etc.

Even the artist when directly asked if it is AI related appears to answer that it is not; though oddly they repeatedly refer to it as being AI-based in their official artist statements.

Here’s the excerpt from the interview were the artist states it is not AI:

“Interviewer: Would it be fair to call this process artificial intelligence?

Tresset: The term artificial intelligence is meaningless, or more precisely its meaning is fluctuating. Some people qualify this as artificial intelligence, I would not. I prefer to consider AI as a field of research, not as a thing.”

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-digital-self/201...

His replies make me reminisce the good old days when digital TV was first introduced in my native Brazil all the way back in 2007.

It was most people's first contact with actual HD video (remember, DVD's were king back in the day with a resolution of 720x480).

Suddenly, everything needed to be "digital"! You saw combination front-door locks being rebranded as "digital locks", ovens with a timer function being rebranded as "digital ovens", motion sensing faucets being sold as "digital faucets" (although this one specifically felt more like a hail mary to get those insufferable things some traction in the home market). You get the idea, any old regular household item that they could stick a piezo buzzer in there was trying to surf the hype wave.

But my all time favorite was when they tried to rebrand video doorbells as "digital doorman's", which is ironic because it relied on 100% analog composite video. lol.

The same thing happened again when Avatar (the movie) sparked the resurgence of 3D movies, with some companies being as desperate as releasing "3D White" toothpaste into the market. Fun times.

I rambled on and forgot to make my point.

My point is, maybe the same way those markets couldn't figure out the fact act of creating a "digital faucet" did not automatically made all the existing faucets "analog", this guy can't figure out that because he made a piece of software that can do things without being explicitly told what to do, does not automatically make it "AI".

Touché! I have to admit I assumed there was some level of data modeling/intelligence happening under the hood, but after reading the comments I now realize I was mistaken. I suppose a more accurate title would be “a robot drew my picture”

It is probably a play on the fact that the topic of AI has become somewhat a buzzword within the art world. The artist is basically making fun of people who don't even know what AI involves, but still celebrate works that claim AI involvement. A more unfavorable reading would be that they want some of the cake without putting in the legwork. But I think they are aware and want to hint toward the terms ambiguity in the popular (non-HN-crowd) perception.

It is a bit like that orange juice company which added "blockchain" to their name: This tells you more about the term than about the company.

It's hiding in the PR statement.

Industry term is artist statement:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_statement

There is probably some face recognition going on.

Maybe, maybe not. My understanding is the background is plain, the chair is fixed position, person sitting does so for long periods like 20-40 mins, and the cameras/tables are manually adjusted by the artist. Simple cropping would work just fine.

You can read more about this piece here: https://patricktresset.com/new/project/5-rnp/

Made me think of our old student project - a drawing robot with CD-ROM tray mechanism that handled a marker pen and drove on a piece of paper with stepper motors and toy wheels, drawing arbitrary vector images: https://youtu.be/GWRNpv_topQ?t=50

It took it a while to draw anything though, and you had to be super careful to not pull on its cables while it was working as that would destroy the drawing - it had no way to orient itself in space whatsoever :)

OT: The terminal on your web page is broken. I type and nothing happens.

“ Will Walker @wills_wire · 55m I have to admit I assumed there was some level of data modeling/intelligence happening under the hood, but after reading the comments I now realize I was mistaken. I suppose a more accurate title would be “a robot drew my picture” “

I was actually hoping for "an AI that drew someones picture" and not "an AI drew a picture of me"

Can we see the three results?

Sure! Here ya go: https://twitter.com/wills_wire/status/1541267970005114880

An AI printed a phone mount for me... I used a 3D printer.

I think that the pen quality could be improved

The artist actually has a note about his pen choice I found quite interesting:

“Spectators often ask about the Bic biro and if there are motivations for their use in the installation, there are a number of reasons. When making a mark is it not black, it is dark gray, it is only the layering of traces which will create black, this enables a variety of tones and textures. The biro is a very reliable and predictable tool, pigmented and other felt pen dry and get dirty only being functional for a few hours, a Bic can draw for 3 days 10 hours a day without monitoring. Since 1950 the “stylo Bic” has seen minutes changes, it is recognised a very french iconic design. It reminds me of childhood, of the drawings and doodles scribbled in notebooks in primary and later schools, for me it is when drawing as a practice begun.”

More here: https://patricktresset.com/new/project/5-rnp/

(2011-2022)

“They have been produced since 2011“

https://patricktresset.com/new/project/5-rnp/

“Jun 27, 2022”

https://mobile.twitter.com/wills_wire/status/154122353548142...

My reply was addressed at your original unedited "(2015)" comment.

Oops, thanks, the “2015” was the first date I found via the embed Vimeo from another comment. The meaning of you’re “?” wasn’t obvious, thought you just didn’t understand HN headline notations.

This a huge yawn

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