Summary

Poe-m is a machine that writes poems based on its observations of the world around it. It was developed as a way to create awareness and engagement around the ethical and legal implications of AI-generated art, including issues of creativity, authorship, and copyright. The machine uses YOLOv5, an object recognition model, and GTP3, a native language model by OpenAI, to generate poems based on visual inputs. The project went through three main iterations, with the final iteration taking the form of a security pole that writes poems in different styles and moods.

The project has sparked a range of reactions from the audience who have encountered it, including awe at the capabilities of AI, concern about the potential for technology to replace creative jobs, and debate about the role of creativity, copyright, and authorship in the creative process. Overall, Poe-m is a thought-provoking project that encourages discussion about the complexities and potential impact of AI art on society.

Prologue

As a designer, my goal is to showcase the history and advancements of technology to a wider audience. With the rapid pace of technological change, it is important to consider the impact that technology has on our lives and society. As a designer, it is my responsibility to translate complex debates about technology and its impact using aesthetics, interaction, technology, and scenography.

One area of technology that particularly interests me is artificial intelligence. AI is a rapidly evolving and influential technology that has the potential to shape many aspects of our lives. I joined the Artifice squad in order to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of AI on society and the ethical considerations surrounding its use, but also to work with this technology for the first time. Through this project, I will explore these topics using scenography, and I believe that this approach will be effective in engaging a wider audience and helping them to consider the implications of AI in a more meaningful way.

Introduction

Creativity is the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form. AI starts to become better and better and machines start to meet some of the definitions of creativity. They create original art pieces, poems, and movie scripts, but also are able to play chess and find better and more unique moves than humans ever can. When technology evolves very fast there is no infrastructure to deal with new conflicts surrounding that new technology.

In September 2022 the artist Jason Alen won the digital art category of the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts competition, after which he revealed that his art piece Théâtre D’opéra Spatial was generated by the AI program Midjourney. His submission did not violate any guidelines, but Jason Alen faced backlash concerning his submission, and next year AI-assisted art is not allowed in the digital art category.

This controversy sparked an interest surrounding the ethics and laws of AI-generated art, especially creativity, authorship, and copyright. Tools to create AI art are getting better and more accessible every day. Things that only experts could do are now generated with a sentence. The goal of this project is to create more awareness of the complexity the new ai generative models bring to society, by creating engagement and debate. This is done by making Poe-m a security camera that is able to generate poems that reflect its observations of the world around it. Poe-m decides the style, the mood, and the moment when a poem should be written. Poe-m is used to make the idea of a machine that is creative on its own more concrete for a general audience but also to attract attention which later can be redirected towards the discussion. By presenting the audience with a technology that is both threatening and beautiful, I want to create a sense of unease and uncertainty that reflects the complex nature of AI and its potential impact on society.