AIMade.Art was originally established over two years ago, by Software Engineer Arturo Calvo, as an online store selling canvas only prints of the works that our AI has created. A rather new company strategy was implemented earlier this year (around February 26th 2021) when the blockchain NFT boom really started heating up in the market.
The decision at the time was to turn off the print only store and pause that market completely and pivot to offer the art as unique AI made art minted as NFTs. Essentially, allowing a purchaser the exclusive access to download our digital file of AI Made Art’s original creations in HDR with proof of the transaction stored on the blockchain… all with the hope the value of the artwork represented on the blockchain increases over time as the market matures and evolves.
This strategy was a success from all standards of blockchain security, digital art purchase transaction satisfaction as well as, so far it seems, with the value proposition of our growing art collection.
Our NFT artworks have steadily risen in Ethereum value as well as in aftermarket NFT sales.
We believe this is partly because of the exclusivity of our portfolio and originality of our unique NFT creations… not to mention the value of an Ethereum token increasing from $1,459.97 on Feb 26th 2021 to $3,767.26 at the time of this writing October 12th 2021.
We are clearly on the right path and intend to continue offering more of our artworks as NFTs. We have posted on social media recently about the potential for NFTs and the benefits of being in the blockchain space. Owning the access to the original digital artwork created by AI Made Art as an NFT allows the holder the immutable and permanent bragging rights to the artwork since there can be only one NFT representing our creations.
Holding an NFT made by us also has many other benefits which is sometimes an uncommon feature in the traditional artworld; the full licensing rights. The NFT owner receives an exclusive and unlimited license to use our artwork (including for commercial purposes). Through our NFT’s, we have granted unlimited licensing power to use the represented art in any way imaginable (usually only granted to others in a traditional market by purchasing various limited-to-exclusive rights package via a licensing fee which may or may not be sold to multiple people and used over and over).
One of our customers has seen the benefit of this creative option offered by that license and developed their own collection on OpenSea (with quite a hefty price tag).
entitled “The blue Master and his Dragons”
We don’t know who they are or what they intend to create around the designs but we wish them the best in their creative endeavors and hope they get their asking price for their collection and their project is a success!
Another major benefit our customers have enjoyed is the free canvas print as a first buyer of the NFT - shipped anywhere in the world! Just last week, a customer sent an email asking about our art selection and curating process. They were from Indonesia. We ship there! We have also shipped to the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Norway, USA and others!
Not only do our customers get the satisfaction of having a digital representation of their favorite art but they also get a complimentary print in real life from us as a “Thank You” for supporting our artistic vision and experiments in blockchain technologies. We are a small veteran-owned startup interested in impacting others lives for the better through art, technology, and giving back.
Though some people within the blockchain community (as well as others in the analog world) have rightly criticized the energy intensive processes used in creating AI art and the use of blockchain technology – we have taken extraordinary steps toward thinking as environmentally conscience as we can be by offsetting all the carbon emissions of our entire process and involvement in the blockchain space. Let’s face it, it is our responsibility to look after the beauty of the planet we live on…it depends on us and how well we are stewards. Do you want the AI of the future to paint a dark portrait of our time taking care of the planet? We have decided to take a step in the right direction and have pledged to offset over 1 Ton of carbon for each NFT sold.
Keep an eye out for our Carbon Offset Celebration Day on our very first NFT Anniversary next February, 2022
We envision the future of AI Made Art as a premier and unique storefront offering multiple types of artificial intelligence creations for multiple types of customers. We are working on multiple projects and there have been recent iterations of different AI GAN generated paintings, AI augmented paintings, paintings using algorithms to target a specific outcome and collaborative efforts of human and AI creations turned into paintings by AI. Some of those pre-production works have caught the attention of those not in the crypto space that admire and want to purchase the art but are not on the blockchain. And it got us to thinking…
While it is -and will always be- true that the purchase of our NFT’s grant the *first owner a donated canvas print of the artwork sent to them free anywhere in the world, we also understand the limitations of those who are unchained given no exposure to the blockchain, coins, tokens, etc. Our desire is that our art be available to all. We also want to bring awareness of the blockchain space since it is because of the blockchain we have grown. We want the value of our current, past, and future minted NFT creations to ultimately increase over time as well as our following grows. Therefore, we feel that more exposure is needed to the traditional art community and wider public - giving them the ability to purchase our art by additionally offering high quality giclee reprints on museum-quality canvas and/or durable artists paper, merchandise, smaller print options, etc. We will be releasing announcements soon with details on some new ways to get our art.
Imagine, you fall in love with one of our artworks and purchase the NFT. Months go by... maybe years. You’re in your dentists office, or at a hotel in some far off place on vacation, or maybe at a local restaurant there…you look up and see some framed reprint art hanging on the wall because it catches your eye. In fact, it looks like some AI inspired artwork that you really recognize. Then it hits you, so you look at your NFT wallet and discover it is the same artwork and you have offers pending!
-AI Made Art
]]>NFTs are disrupting the creative industry by providing artists with a new medium to sell their work. However, they have a significant carbon footprint. Some NFT marketplaces and galleries offset their CO2 emissions by planting trees. The long-term solution, though, should come from structural changes in the way Ethereum's blockchain works.
]]>NFTs are disrupting the creative industry by providing artists with a new medium to sell their work and even make a profit with subsequent resales. Although this technique has been around for some years already, it is in 2021 when it has started flourishing driven by the new golden era for cryptocurrencies.
However, NFTs are being criticized for the carbon emissions they produce. Each transaction is estimated to produce 20 kg of CO2 [1] and there are often multiple transactions connected to a single artwork.
An individual NFT transaction does not directly increase emissions. As SuperRare points out [2], Ethereum's blockchain has a fixed energy consumption at a given point in time regardless on how many transactions are processed.
While this statement is technically true, there are at least two ways NFTs are indirectly pushing carbon emissions further [3]:
Ethereum's network, like Bitcoin, uses the energy-extensive Proof of Work mechanism. Even though Ethereum has plans [4] to cut its carbon footprint by 99% by shifting to the comparatively cleaner Proof of Stake protocol, it hasn't happened yet.
To put things into perspective, Ethereum consumes just a small fraction of the energy that a single Bitcoin transaction requires [5].
On March 17th 2021, the crypto art gallery aimade.art decided [6] to start offsetting the carbon emissions it generates by planting trees in rural areas. Two weeks later, the renowned NFT marketplace Nifty announced [7] its plans to become carbon-negative. Although these movements could be understood as "greenwashing", they are voluntary initiatives that help mitigate the negative impact on the environment while reinforcing blockchain as an alternative distribution channel for artists. The long term solution, though, should come from the shift to Ethereum 2.0 (proof of stake) and the increasing use of renewable energy.
The open-source project cryptoart-footprint has calculated (roughly) the carbon emissions of the main NFT marketplaces. If you are an artist or a collector, you can see your estimated carbon footprint on carbon.fyi.
]]>The fear of machines taking our jobs is nothing new; and we can see the exact same thing happening now amplified by Hollywood movies, which generate a rather negative aura around robots. However, Artificial Intelligence is already bringing huge growth from the new types of goods, services and innovations that this technology enables. Indeed, Gartner [1] estimates that AI will generate $2.9 trillion in business value in 2021.
Does it mean that our jobs will be safe? Not at all. Artificial Intelligence will definitely take many of our jobs - 75 million by 2022 according to the World Economic Forum [2]. However, in the same period WEF estimates that 133 million new jobs being created - so there will be a net increase in employment. The mid-term expectation is that most of the repetitive, low-demanding jobs will be gradually taken by machines, while more meaningful jobs that require our unique human skills will arise.
In other words, we won't have a jobs issue but a skills issue, and we have to figure out how we can prepare for these new jobs. We don't have much time, though: by 2022, 54% of the employees will require significant reskilling [2]. There won't be a finish line. Workers will need to change their mindsets and keep upskilling and reskilling throughout their lives. The biggest challenge for policy-makers, businesses and individuals is the societal move towards agile life-long learning.
What will be the most demanded skills by 2022? Analytical thinking, active learning, creativity, tech design, programming, critical thinking, complex problem-solving and leadership.
These transformations, if managed poorly, could widen gaps in society and create greater inequality. However, if they are managed wisely, they could lead to a new age of meaningful jobs and better quality of life.
[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-08-05-gartner-says-ai-augmentation-will-create-2point9-trillion-of-business-value-in-2021
[2] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf
Goodfellow's idea got a lot of attention from the academic and industry communities and new research papers followed improving the state of the art and, as it can be seen in the images below, the perceived quality of the human faces that GANs generated.
Needless to say that none of these six people actually exists. However, for the last three ones, only a skilled computer forensic would be able to detect the deception.
GANs are making a tremendous positive impact in different domains, such as healthcare or in creative industries. Unfortunately, malicious applications of this apparently harmless technique are emerging and posing a thread to our personal and even national security.
Scams. Deep Learning has become a gold mine for criminal organizations that combine hyperrealistic GAN-generated faces with voice synthesizers to perform scams online. The so-called romance scams, for example, cost Americans $143M in 2018.
Revenge porn. One of the most shameful applications of this technology is to ruin people's reputation by creating footages of sexual acts with the target person's face. According to this research, 100% of the victims of these videos were women.
Fake news. Deepfake videos are a threat to national security, according to the Pentagon. The defense and intelligence services fear scenarios targeting democratic processes (manipulate elections) and the incitement of crowd mobilization under false pretenses. This deepfake video of former US President Barack Obama is an example of the dangers this technique poses.
Improving the deception detection techniques, together with more strict laws controlling unethical uses of these technologies, is essential in order to limit the negative impacts on our society.
Nevertheless, it is not only up to the research community and the authorities to tackle this issue. We citizens must strengthen our awareness of these threats and be more suspicious when consuming digital content from untrusted sources.
]]>Artificial Intelligence is disrupting the creative industries in ways we could not foresee just a few years ago. Although the term "AI Art" is often used to refer to wall art made by Artificial Intelligence, the rise of these generative techniques has impacted other artistic domains such as music, poetry and even film.
]]>Wall Art. After a portrait made by AI was sold at auction at Christies for almost $500k, we have seen many other digital artists exploring this domain. Some of the most relevant pioneers in this field are Cueva Gallery (Ireland), D'Agostino AI (France) and, of course, our own gallery AImade.art (Norway) ;-)
Music. One of the emerging uses of AI nowadays is the generation of music in collaboration with humans. Two useful resources are MuseNet and Magenta, which are tools that allow you to create your own music with different styles.
Movies. There are even movies already directed, written and even performed by AI, but don't expect a masterpiece (yet). This one is called Zone Out and it is worth watching (6 min):
This case sparked a heated debate about who owns the copyright of artworks created by Artificial Intelligence. The expert Jonathan Bailey summarized it well in this article: "it is a total legal clusterf*ck".
These are the stakeholders that could potentially claim intellectual property rights:
Cambridge Dictionary defines art as "the making of objects, images, music, etc. that are beautiful or that express feelings". However, defining the boundaries of art has always been controversial.
In the early years of photography, many art experts argued that it shouldn't be considered an art form since photography involved mechanical and chemical procedures instead of human hand and spirit. Photographers that attempted to have their images included in the fine arts sections of the exhibitions were responded with criticism in the press and eventual repudiation.
Nowadays, photography is considered an art form as valid as any other, with thousands of galleries around the world specialized in fine art photography.
Something similar might be happening now with AI Art. In 2018, an image created by Artificial Intelligence was sold for $432500 in an auction at Christie's. The announcement generated a heated debate on press and social media arguing that it should not be considered art since it was created by a machine and, as a consequence, it could not express any emotions.
However, AI Art is actually the result of a collaboration between humans and machines in three different phases:
Through this collaboration, Artificial Intelligence is pushing the boundaries of art and opening a new world of possibilities for the creative industries.
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