We are part of the Microsoft Research AI & Society fellowship program. This program aims to catalyze research collaboration between Microsoft Research and scholars and experts across a range of disciplines core to discussions at the intersection of AI and its impact on society.
Our research challenge
Our research challenge is « Towards Creative-Centered AI: Opportunities and Challenges at the Intersection of Creatives, AI, and Society. »
AI technologies are becoming more powerful at the same time as they are becoming more widespread and accessible. Their role in creative and cultural sectors, in turn, has become increasingly complex. On one hand, AI tools open new creative possibilities; on the other hand, the way they are built and deployed brings a range of potential harms, from economic impact on artistic labor to copyright violations. The intrusion of AI into the mainstream artistic sphere forces us to confront our vision of creativity itself.
Our objectives are the following:
- Investigate the impact of AI technologies, especially the recent advancement of large-scale generative models, on artists and creatives;
- Understand the creatives’ values, needs and concerns working with AI technologies through participatory and community-driven approaches; and
- Shape the future development of AI-based solutions by informing technologies, services, infrastructures, and policies to empower creatives’ capabilities, their social contract, and new emerging media.
People involved
ISIR
- Baptiste Caramiaux (CNRS researcher, AI & Society fellow)
Microsoft Research
- Vera Liao (principal researcher)
- Gonzalo Ramos (principal researcher)
- Kate Crawford (senior principal researcher)
- Jenny Williams (senior content designer)
- Dan Fay (senior director)
Dialogues with artists
We organise salons where we bring together artists, researchers, and technologists to discuss the shifting role of AI in creative practices and communities and explore how we can shape the development of AI and change the dominant narratives about AI in the arts, to enable a future in which artists can flourish.
Research on AI Narratives in the Arts
We do research into AI narratives in the arts. It is not uncommon to see mainstream media claiming that AI creates or becomes an artist. And, major technology players are proposing technologies for artists to make their work less repetitive, more creative. These communication efforts put forward a biased narrative about what art is and how AI is the best tool to fit into it.
These narratives often seem to overshadow other elements that are more important for artistic creation, such as the impact of the collective (the community), the authorship of a work, or the means of action required for creation. This research focuses on these pre-dominant narratives, and proposes to deconstruct them in order to envisage a more situated conception of AI.