Future Artists Beware – Computer Algorithms Can Sketch Like You, For You and No Longer Need You

Is your career as an artist numbered? The reason I ask is that I’ve joined a local art group and those who are doing the sketching, painting, and training and teaching of other artists still have some work to do themselves. It might be easier for those teaching new artists to train AI software using visual recognition systems, kind or like training speech recognition software. Interesting indeed, no doubt – okay so, let’s talk shall we?

You see, there was a rather interesting piece in Gizmag on July 22, 2013 titled; “Computer model learns to copy artists’ drawing styles,” by Ben Coxworth which noted; “Researchers started with 7 artists, using a stylus and tablet to create digital sketches based on photos of 24 male and female subjects. The artists did four sketches of each photo – they were allowed 270 seconds to create one, then 90, 30 and finally 15 seconds. Needless to say, the sketches became increasingly abstract as the time limits were shortened. As they drew, individual strokes were recorded.”

The computer noted the types of strokes, lengths, shading strokes based on the image for the AI (artificial intelligent) training of the software. The sketching mechanism and software performed excellently on subsequent different digital pictures as it sketched to copy them, often better than the artists themselves, judged by other humans in a blind observational preference “taste test” scenario. The robotic sketcher with software did make jawbone lines more bold and eyes slightly too dark, but over all a huge success and realize this is still in the test phases.

What do I mean by that last statement; what I mean to say is that these robotic sketching devices and software WILL replace human artists and perhaps a lot sooner than anyone may have anticipated. Still, you could say there is a difference between copying from a digital picture or landscape than creating from the minds’ eye, nevertheless that too might not be as difficult as once thought either due to the fMRI brain scans and mapping of human thought patterns, and even if every mind processes information differently, that too could be forthcoming, perhaps a decade or more away – but coming either way.

Suffice it to say that future artists who consider sketching and painting as future career, ought to think twice because the computer algorithms, artificial intelligent software, and robotic technologies are on a collision course for this sector, and they will dominate it. Please consider all this and think on it.