The results of these methods are on display in the lab. Portraits of professors, historical figures, landscapes, cityscapes, that frog ballerina, all in a distinctive, abstract style — even a self-portrait of the first FRIDA robot. The consistency of the paintings suggests a unified artistic vision, for which Mr. Schaldenbrand, Dr. McCann and Dr. Oh decline to claim credit. They attribute each of the works to FRIDA.
But could FRIDA have an oeuvre without a will, a heart or fingernails? Can a robot be an artist?
Amy LaViers, a computer scientist and dancer who runs the Robotics, Automation and Dance Lab, an independent nonprofit, said that such questions wouldn’t seem so crazy, or scary, if people were open to dissolving the hard distinction between the artist and the medium. Everything — whether it’s watercolor or A.I. image generators or a desire for expressivity — is wrapped up in the art. Even something as simple as paint can seem to have a mind of its own, and a painter has to react to the way it glides on the canvas. Dr. LaViers suggested viewing FRIDA as a “robotic paintbrush,” rather than a painting robot.
“There are things you can do with artificial bodies that humans can’t do,” she said. “It broadens the palette of human expression.”
Dr. Oh emphasized that humans were still essentially involved in FRIDA’s painting. They prompt the machine and mix the paints, set up the canvas and limit the number of total brushstrokes in each piece. The data sets that FRIDA and other image generators are trained on contain paintings and photographs created by other people. But, Dr. Oh added, the goal was never to make something to compete with human artists. “We want to promote human creativity,” she said. “We want people to express their thoughts in different ways.”
In the lab, Mr. Schaldenbrand watched as a painting slowly emerged from FRIDA’s deliberate gray brushstrokes: a foggy road, the shapes of cars, taillights. “This is hard to explain,” he said. “I don’t want to give some false notion that there’s a consciousness going on here. But it’s kind of fun sometimes to pretend.”
