Creative Robots

Access Teams of Expert Solvers led by World-Class Facilitators

Home For Companies Company Resources For Solvers Solver Resources About Us Contact Us

Creative Robots

December 8, 2010. By Peter Lloyd

I’m impressed with the portraits sketched by the robotic hand and arm in the video below. The drawings represent their human models so well they actually evoke a feeling in me. Not quite Mona Lisa-category emotions but a response. Has this robot created art? Can robots create art? Music? Science? Will robots ever do anything creative?

Near the end of the video, the narrator asks similar questions: “Can human creativity be programmed into a machine? And if that’s possible, is the result really art?” Let’s have a look.

I think you’ll agree that the robot creates life-like faces. At the same time, it does little more than reproduce images it observes. It basically converts input to line-drawn output. A clever technical stunt. But I would argue that some portrait artists do little more than that. Is their work art? A camera or xerox machine can imitate and reproduce reality much more faithfully that any human hand. If art imitates life, they’re all well on their way to the halls of creativity. But I don’t think anyone wants to argue that a xerox machine makes art.

And yet the images I saw evoked a feeling in me. I think that’s because I see reproductions of real persons with true-to-life expressions on their faces. No, the drawing robot will not demonstrate creativity until it draws a face without copying. At this point, I don’t think any robot can do that even from its database of captured faces. Much less draw a face that expresses that expresses something it feels.

Creative work rises above imitation to expression. And you first have to have ideas and emotions to express them. Until robots live and interact with us and other robots or both, they will never be able to draw from experience or express their feelings.

Even a meticulously realistic artist like Norman Rockwell expresses ideas. Conventional, ordinary ideas to be sure, but the result is art. You don’t even have to shatter convention or lead your field into uncharted territory, like Picasso, to create art. But you do have to do more than a robot.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

171 Right Brain Workouts are available in the 134-page paperback Right Brain Workouts: Aerobic Exercises for the Creative Side of Your Brain.

Right Brain Workouts Explained

[NEXT WORKOUT]

Become a
Paid Problem Solver