Love is in the AI
The battle of Emotions vs AI algorithms
Why so serious? Have you ever wondered why most AI generated art so rarely represents any sorts of positive emotions, say happiness or love? Is it hard for the algorithm to answer love prompts? Does it understand feelings, or emotions, or any of those? Is there a difference? Feelings or emotions?
artist: Jonas Peterson, source: Instagram
Which came first, the emotion or the feeling? This is way simpler than the chicken or egg one. Emotions start as sensations in our bodies, and only later feelings are generated from our thoughts about those emotions. That’s how it works in general. How is this touched upon in the AI-generated art? There are numerous great examples of all the emotions depicted in a form of anger, anxiety, curiosity, surprise or even numbness but so few in comparison showing the other, positive side of the same coin.
artist: Warner Bot / source: Instagram
Back in 2021, a team of AI researchers from Stanford (ArtEmis) has trained algorithms to see the emotions behind the great works of art. The aim of the ArtEmis project since then has been not only to teach computers to recognize the images, but how those images make people feel. One could say – the researchers set out on a mission to humanize the AI (sic!). Based on a data set of over 80k arts and 440k responses from over 6k humans about their feelings towards it, they taught the algorithm to categorize the art pieces into 8 emotional categories — like awe, fear, amusement, sadness etc. Now, here comes the crazy part! Not only does the algorithm manage to identify the experience of the whole image, but it can point out even the emotions within a given painting. Can it get even crazier? Yes it can. ArtEmis is able to identify the fact that different people have different feelings while looking at the same work of art!
artist: Tim Tadder, source: Instagram
artist: ʟᴀɴᴅ ᴏғ ᴀʀᴄᴀ, source: Instagram
If that’s even possible, then love prompts should not be that hard to answer. We have collected some of the great examples of AI-generated art we have stumbled upon. Feel free to contact us and send us some more “love” if you have enough to share.
