I Trained An AI To Make Art (And You Can Too!)

What Do Robots Dream About?

The first time I saw a piece of AI-created art all I could think about was how badly I wanted to play around with an art bot, the possibilities seemed endless and my inner art nerd just wanted to tinker and explore. I have no idea about AI technology, so while I really wanted to play around with an artificial artist I knew the chances were pretty slim - I can’t code that well and I wouldn't even know where to start. However, I was inspired to create a robot helper character for my website, just to incorporate some fun elements into my work, like 'The Best Damn Story Generator Ever!' I named it PopBot and lamented in the fact that it would never be more than a character design.

Then Playform came into my life and made my dreams come true! I’m not even exaggerating, I love this tool and its art has really inspired my own; so even though I’ve only been using it for a short while I wanted to share it with you nerdy little beans. Except I’m not nerdy enough to understand all the technical bits, so you’re getting an idiots guide. That's me, I'm the idiot.

I discovered Playform whilst browsing through Facebook one day and I quickly made use of its easy, interface and powerful features. I should probably also state that I'm not affiliated with Playform in any way - I just Stan it real hard.

How Do AI's Produce Art?

First of all, let’s talk about the two main types of AI art. I swear it’s not as complicated as it sounds and I've broken it down and simplified it to provide the easiest explanation.

The first type is called ‘Neural Style Transfer’ and this is the type that gets people a bit cross because it’s not ‘true’ AI art and more of a glorified Snapchat filter. Users must input a picture to work from and the AI will use a set of pre-determined styles also selected by the user to create a new piece by fusing the two together. Want to make your selfie an Andy Warhol masterpiece? Vincent Von Gogh your landscape photography? Henry Matiesse all over the couch? NST will help you achieve that look.

The second is called 'Generational Adversarial Networks' and this is what most people consider to be true AI art. Basically, you show the AI hundreds of example image inputs to inform of colour, shape, composition etc and the AI takes what it has learnt and makes its own piece from compositions of the collection of inputs.

Playform actually offers both of these options to its users, with NST art for quick, free options and longer GAN training for the dedicated art nerds. I've already deeply explored both of these creation methods and I'm going to show you a fraction of the possibilities right here.

What Is Playform?

Artificial Intelligence was first created in 1955 but it has only really begun to rapidly evolve over the past decade. With new advances happening in the field, it wasn't long before people began creating art images - after all, art is considered an emotional communication of sorts, so what better test for an AI to perform? Most AI models have been restricted in their use though, with only Academics and professional tech artists having access to the complicated programs.

Playform is the creation of Dr. Ahmed Elgammal and his team, and their goal is to make AI art tools available to everyone. The software requires no coding at all, instead, the controls are all visual-based. That means that it's super easy to use and accessible for everyone.

Signing up to the Playform website is free and you get 3 hours worth of training credits to play around with so that you can experience the full potential of the software. Once your credits run out, your free account will still be allowed to create a certain number of each project per month. There are a few different membership levels that give access to more features, but the basic membership is free and allows you a certain amount of creative activity and training time. If you sign up using this link, we both get $15 of credits. This isn’t intended to be a full guide to Playform, so I just want to talk about the NST and GAN features and quickly list some more cool bits at the end.

What Can Playform Do?

SKETCH

This is Playform’s NST tool that is really simple and fun to use whilst allowing you to create some beautiful, unique pieces. All it requires is one black and white image, you can draw this yourself or click ‘upload background sketch’ to convert any picture into a black and white image. You may need to invert the colours to get it to generate correctly. You can choose from three different sketch types: landscape, still life and surreal composition. You can also choose from lots of brilliant art styles based of the master artists of history, such as Van Gogh, Cessane, Warhol, Monet and more. The AI will then create your image in whichever style you’ve chosen. There are so many great styles to choose from that you will always find something fresh and new.

TRAIN

Here’s where things get exciting (and probably expensive): you can train a GAN AI to create truly original, digital imaginings too. You can read and learn all the technical parts here, but Playform toutes itself as being a no code AI and it definitely delivers.

All your really need to do is input some ideas, it needs as little as 30 images to get started. You create a collection of image material for the AI to study and you just let it do it’s thing - it’s as simple as that!

I decided I wanted to train an AI to make my favourite kind of art - pop surrealism. I gathered as much art as I could find in this genre, being sure to add as many different artists, techniques and mediums as I could. I’m still adding to this private pool of knowledge, but so far I have around 3000 images for the AI to work from. It costs $5 per hour to train an AI, but there’s no time limit and if you use the links in this post you’ll get 3 hours for free. At first, the images start out weird and blocky, but the more you train it, the clearer the images become. You can even create videos to show how pieces progress and develop over the length of a project.

OTHER FEATURES

MIX

This is another free feature that you can play around with, but I personally haven't given it much of a trial...yet. Mix allows you to choose from a random selection of generated faces or upload your own photo, then you can adjust the facial features through a range of controls and settings. It reminds me a lot of 'The Sims Creation Studio' and it can produce some hilarious results.

SHARE

I'll be honest with you, this feature really bugs the crap out of me. Artists can share their work to the community feed, with a title and description if they want to, and have it viewed by the Playform community. That's the good part, the part I really appreciate. The bad part is that there seems to be no way to view your own previous posts. There's no personal feed showing what you've already posted, which is quite annoying when you have a lot to share and a short memory. I'm always slightly put-off by sharing my work because I have no idea if I've already shared it.

EXPLORE

One of the aforementioned perks to the community feed is the ability to look at other artists work and get inspiration. You can see the current works of Playform's top artists as well as toggle between the most recent and most popular posts by the rest of the community.

STUDIO

The Studio is an exclusive program by Playform that is reserved for the top creating artists and is invite-only. You can apply to have your portfolio of art viewed and if you get invited into the coveted inner-circle, you will receive the top level of membership as well as many other artist perks and benefits. You will get unlimited, free training credits as well as exciting learning and exhibition opportunities. I will definitely tell you more about it when I get there. *exaggerated and highly awkward wink*

SHOP

If you're one of the lucky little beans who earns a Studio level membership then you will also be eligible to sell your beautiful AI masterpieces in the exclusive Playform shop. You will find a lot of gorgeous art from the top artists in there and you can purchase canvases, prints and more whilst supporting the artists. So go there, duh.

I’m still training my model, but its art has become so unique and so visually interesting that I’ve decided to share its work with the world on Instagram. I love how the images are like a Rorschach Ink Blot test - everyone sees something different and the longer you look at it, the more stuff you see. Even when compared to other art pieces on the Playform Website, PopBot’s designs and imaginings stand out from the rest due to their vibrant colours and bold lines.

If you want to have a mess around with Playform for free then click here.

If you’d like to stare at some art and see what pops up, check out my Instagram page.