Within popular culture, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often associated with dystopia, especially through the visual tropes used to illustrate it. As the technology becomes increasingly part of our daily lives, there’s a need to make AI more accessible to the general public, being realistic with risks and demonstrating its potential rewards.
We’ve been collaborating with industry leading AI lab DeepMind to answer this need through Visualising AI, commissioning a diverse range of artists to create open source imagery, building a multi-dimensional picture of how AI can impact society.
As creative producers on the project over the past seven months, we’ve identified and invited seven of our favourite artists to spend time with scientists, engineers, researchers, ethicists and more at DeepMind, discussing key themes in AI, before using those conversations as a springboard to create new artworks. It is an ongoing project, but topics explored so far range from AI safety to robotics and digital biology, illustrating the roles and responsibilities of AI through the accessible language of visual art. We are then releasing the resulting collections through the online image sharing platform Unsplash, for anyone to download and use free-of-charge.
Image Credit: Vincent Schwenk, Unsupervised Learning
DeepMind hope that by creating a large catalogue of new imagery, and actively distributing it open source, so it’s free for anyone to use, they will provide new routes and tools to understand key concepts of AI. The aim is to open up transparent and approachable conversations around AI, ultimately giving more people a voice in how the tech is developed.
A key aspect of the project is that each artist is given complete creative freedom, briefed to interpret the shared knowledge in whichever way they choose. This is because we want to see a broad range of visual responses to the ground-breaking work DeepMind is doing, with each artist giving their unique interpretation. And their interpretations have been incredible! Vincent Schwenk, Wes Cockx, Rose Pilkington, Khyati Trehan, Tim West, Champ Panupong Techawongthawon, Domhnall Malone and Nidia Dias, have created absolutely stunning work that we are delighted to share with the world. It’s now six weeks after releasing the first batch and we have reached over 21.2 million views on the Unsplash page, with 176K downloads and the artwork being used by a variety of media, including Buzzfeed, Medium and Towards Data Science.
To download the first instalment of Visualising AI, please visit DeepMind's Unsplash page. All images are free to use under the Creative Commons licence. Visualising AI is an ongoing project; we can’t wait to commission the next round of artists.
Image credit: Khyati Trehan, Digital Biology
"Visuals leading up to now depicting AI haven’t done justice to the scale of positive impact Artificial General Intelligence has already, and continues to have on the world. Visualising AI felt less like a design project and more like a visual movement and I’m so glad I could contribute to it."
Khyati Trehan, Artist
“Working with DeepMind to celebrate the wonder of AI visually was a dream project for me: I enjoyed combining my passion for 3D with the complex, abstract concepts inherent in these technologies. It was a privilege to learn more about the incredible directions in which DeepMind is pushing AI and a fascinating challenge to try to reflect these themes in the images.”
Tim West, Artist