[LUM#22] Natural Creativity

[LUM Magazine, Podcast] - Published on November 12, 2024 in Science-Society

Can artificial intelligence be creative? For researcher Charles Lecellier and photographer Harald Schmidt, while AI can be surprising, human creativity is irreplaceable.

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Combining statistical learning and molecular biology to better understand genome regulation is the goal of Charles Lecellier, a researcher at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Montpellier and the Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics in Montpellier. " As part of our awareness-raising efforts, we wanted to illustrate the idea that machine learning algorithms are currently limited by training data," the researcher points out.

Charles Lecellier then called on Harald Schmidt, a scientist and photographer with a keen interest in artificial intelligence. "In my photographic work, in addition to film and digital photography, I use generative computing, mainly as an abstraction assistant."

With the advent of generative AI in 2022, Harald Schmidt discovered "a new and fascinating technology for creating photographic abstractions." This technology in no way replaces the photographer: "Most of the work in which I have applied generative computing began with an actual photographic act, taken with a digital camera or using analog techniques, to create assemblages, compositions, and mosaics."

The researcher and photographer emphasize that AI works on images generated by humans and does not directly implement a creative process. "AI is just a reproduction of the average of what it has learned. You can't tell it to be creative; you have to give it clues. But it still creates some pretty surprising things,"says the photographer. "The overall idea is that artificial intelligence does not create, it just gives us what we ask it to give us, but human creativity remains essential and irreplaceable,"concludes Charles Lecellier.

Mixed media images resulting from experimentation with the application of generative computing techniques to real photographic works as an aid to abstraction.

The colorful background images are artistic interpretations of the titles of scientific publications by Charles Lecellier and his team, created with the support of generative computing techniques.