The Creative AI Lab’s database* is an ongoing project to aggregate tools and resources for artists, designers, engineers, curators & researchers interested in incorporating machine learning (ML) and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) into their practice.
Originally, the database was launched to provision a gap between general tool repositories such as Github and HuggingFace and more informal, decentralised artists’ networks for exchange. It brings into one place new tools for artists to build with, alongside critical resources to inspire and critically analyse those builds.
In line with FAE4’s inquiry into the possibility for public-interest AI governance or intervention at each layer of the AI stack, and in response to the influx of new foundation model-driven products to market, tool entries after 2023 are evaluated in their entry description using a qualitiative metric system. These are based on the core criteria of transparency, creative malleability, technical interoperability, calibre of research, and propensity to redistribute [read more about these here]. Tools aren’t admitted or omitted based on these metrics, but instead assessed, for the community to decide whether they are value-aligned.
Taken together, these criteria assess how a tool might fit into an ever-evolving ecosystem of semi-autonomous technologies. This evaluation aims to keep users informed about the range of possibility each tool offers, alongside the externalities it brings to their working practice, the wider creative community and the public. It will inform future research from the Lab in 23-24 into the public value of artistic practice that engages with AI.
Tools are defined as systems + software that bring new capabilities to artistic workflow. They can be generative (producing images or text from data) or assist along the way in the creative process, including in R&D or simulation building. Tools might be core to the production of the work itself, or play a smaller assistive role.
Resources help to imagine and critically conceptualise future AI systems, ways of working and deployment contexts.
*The collection of materials presented aren’t comprehensive—it is a growing collection of research collected & commissioned by the Creative AI Lab.
<aside> ❀ Rolling call for new tools on our Telegram community. Keep up-to-date and submit here.
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| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 07/20 | Database launched |
| 07/20 | https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/a-different-research-agenda-julia-kaganskiy-introduces-the-creative-ai-lab/ by published on Serpentine Art & Ideas to contextualise database |
| 07/20 | Luba Elliot curates round of database entries |
| 07/20 | https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/luba-elliott-on-the-emergence-of-the-creative-ai-field/ |
| 04/21 | https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/everything-i-say-is-true-poetic-bibliography/ |
| 04/21 | Kite’s poetic bibliography added to database |
| 05/21-09/23 | Database maintained by members of Creative AI Lab during research |
| 09/23 | Metric report presented on FAE community call |
| 09/23 | Database re-boot with metrics for public interest and externalities |
| 10/23 | Reinforcement Learning and Simulations update from Delta_Ark Studios |
| 02/24 | Rolling call for community submissions |
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New databse metrics for Public AI
Everything I say Is True: Poetic Bibliography by KITE
Luba Elliot on the Emergence of the Creative AI Field
The Umbra of an Imago: Writing Under the Control of Machine Learning by Allison Parish
A Different Research Agenda: Julia Kaganskiy Introduces the Creative AI Lab
003: Aesthetics of AI Entanglements reader
002: Aesthetics of AI Interfaces reader
001: Aesthetics of New AI reader
Turret Theory: Training the human with dmsfctn’s Godmode Epochs
A Cephalopod ↔ Machine Encounter with 0rphan Drift
The Creative AI Lab is a research collaboration between Serpentine Arts Technologies and the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.
NYU’s Digital Theory Lab provides a platform to develop and maintain the broad-based, interdisciplinary conceptual framework necessary for understanding and transforming the way we live in and with the digital.