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What Is the First AI Art And When Was it Created?

If you are interested in artificial intelligence (AI) art, you might wonder how we got to where we are today in terms of technology. Today, systems like the DALL-E AI image generator make us wonder if there’s any limit to what ai can accomplish. 

But, where did it all start?

In this article, we will discuss the history of AI art and the first-ever AI painting, as well as some modern AI tools that you can use to create and sell AI art. But first, let us briefly discuss what AI art really is.

What Is AI Art?

AI art is a type of artwork created with the help of artificial intelligence. Algorithms can generate AI art, or humans can create them using AI tools. For example, an algorithm could be used to create a painting that looks like it was made by Picasso, or a human artist could use an AI tool to generate a 3D sculpture. There are many types of AI art, and the medium is constantly evolving, making it hard to say exactly what AI art is. Still, we can narrow it down to two main categories: digital and physical.

Digital art is any type of art created electronically, such as a painting created using an AI tool like our text-to-image art generator. Physical art, on the other hand, is any type of art created in the physical world, such as a 3D sculpture, created using AI-assisted technology.

Now that we know what AI art is, let's explore its history.

What Is the History of AI Art?

The history of AI art dates back to 1973, when American computer scientist Harold Cohen created the first-ever AI painting. Cohen's painting was created using a program he developed called AARON. AARON is an artificial intelligence program that generates art based on a set of rules Cohen programmed into it–for example, one of the rules might have been to "paint a blue line." Using this rule, AARON would generate a painting that consisted of various blue lines. Cohen's “paintings” were abstract, and they were often compared to the work of Jackson Pollock. But unlike Pollock, Cohen did not drip paint onto his canvases. Instead, he instructed the algorithms he developed to draw for him.

Although AARON was the first digital AI art creator, it was not the first time we had been introduced to intelligent machines. For example, Gordon Pasks developed a machine called MusiColour in 1953. MusiColour was a reactive machine that responded to environmental sound to drive an array of lights, and was one example of an intelligent machine at the time, as many others were in the development process.

Jumping ahead to 2014, generative adversarial networks (GANs) were developed. At a basic level, a GAN has two components: a generator and a discriminator. The generator generates new data, such as images, similar to the training data. The discriminator, on the other hand, is responsible for determining whether the data created by the generator is real or fake.

So how does this relate to AI art?

GANs can be used to generate realistic images, such as portraits, and in the world of AI art, GANs have been used to create stunning pieces of artwork. For example, a GAN-generated painting called Edmond de Belamy was sold for $432,500 at a 2018 auction. The painting was a tribute to Ian Goodfellow–the inventor of GANs.

How Can You Create AI Art?

Fortunately, art enthusiasts no longer need complex computer science knowledge to create AI art today. There are a wide range of user-friendly AI tools that you can use to create and sell digital paintings with just a few clicks.

Perhaps the easiest of these to use is our text-to-image AI generator, which converts a simple text prompt into a beautiful painting. For example, if you wanted to create a landscape with a sunset, you could simply type "landscape with a sunset" into the text box, and our generator would do the rest.

On the other hand, if you want to create art that is "dreamy" or "trippy," you could use a deep dream artwork generator tool. Many of these tools are available online and are based on Google's DeepDream project, which was a major advancement in the company's image recognition capabilities. 

If you want to dive further into DeepDream, check out our recent post on how Google DeepDream works.

Create jaw-dropping art in seconds with AI

This is the most fun I've had on the internet in a long long time

u/DocJawbone on Reddit

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