Robot artist Ai-Da creates paintings by hand and moves viewers to tears

While artificial intelligence penetrates various spheres of online work, a unique robot artist Ai-Da appeared, created by art gallery director Aidan Meller. “Art is a skill. If it’s a skill, a machine can master it,” claims Meller. Named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, robot artist Ai-Da physically creates drawings and paintings. Rather, this is a female robot artist – she has a female face, short black wig and 2 robotic arms for drawing.

Cameras in her eyes allow her to maintain eye contact and recognize objects. Although Ai-Da has no emotions, her works evoke strong feelings in viewers – some even cry in front of her paintings. The robot was created by a team of more than 30 programmers, robotics engineers, art historians and psychologists. The idea came to Meller when he was reflecting on the future of art and what makes great artists outstanding.

Studying works of masters from Michelangelo to Warhol, he realized: all great artists reacted to fundamental social changes of their time. So he decided to react. So to speak, proactively.