Leaping into the MetaverseAi-Da produces portraits of sitting subjects using a robotic hand attached to her lifelike feminine figure. She’s also able to talk, giving detailed answers to questions about her artistic process and attitudes towards technology. She even gave a TEDx talk about “” in Oxford a few years ago. While the words she speaks are programmed, Ai-Da’s creators have also been experimenting with having her write and perform her own poetry.
Indeed, art never exists in isolation. It always needs someone to give it"art" status. And the criteria for whether you think something is art is informed by both your individual expectations and broader cultural conceptions. The programmer of an AI application or the designer of a robot does not just use technical means to make the public see their machine as creative. This also happens through presentation: how, where and why we interact with a technology; how we talk about that technology; and where we feel that technology fits in our personal and cultural contexts.Artist robot Ai-Da painting at the Giardini della biennale in Venice, Italy.