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They've Taught an AI to Compose an Original Rembrandt Painting

Not a copy: The Next Rembrandt project's 'bot created a unique painting in Rembrandt's style

By Rain Noe - November 18, 2016

in Tech | Fine Art

Earlier this year there was an unprecedented collaboration between ING, Microsoft and TU Delft, with the willing participation of Dutch museums Mauritshuis and Rembrandthuis, to teach an artificial intelligence to paint a Rembrandt.

Not to duplicate an existing Rembrandt, but to paint an original one, with a unique composition and using a person who never existed as the subject.

The idea was that the AI could analyze and learn Rembrandt's style and then produce, on request, an original portrait based on certain parameters ("Thirtysomething male, black hat, white collar, looking to the right.") Here's how they did it, and here's the frighteningly convincing image that the computer reproduced—on a 3D printer, no less, to simulate the height of brushstrokes:

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It was called the Next Rembrandt project, and I have very mixed feelings about it. While it is unquestionably an impressive technological achievement, ought we be moving AI into those non-numerical areas of human creativity? I suppose one could argue that the Next Rembrandt painting is not truly creative, just a mere average of existing values; but the video made it sound as if the algorithm was a bit more sophisticated than that.

It's not difficult to imagine, as a next step, feeding an AI the works of all great masters in a particular genre, and asking the machine to create works that can adhere to the genre while "expressing" the work in a style unlike these masters' work. Then, what's the step after that? You tell us.

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8 years ago

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The left eye is shape while the right one look blurry. There are still many work to be done to make it perfect.

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Jim Lewis

8 years ago

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Sorry, doesn't look real. The face seems too modern, especially the right jaw area— lower left as you look at it. It doesn't have the textural complexity of the Rembrandts they showed earlier.

Maybe it's different in person, but it doesn't look like a face he would have selected.

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Charles Gordon

8 years ago

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Interesting. It could be very useful to restore damaged paintings at the least. Or...how about converting sketches or unfinished work?

This initial one, though, seems like "just" an average of a selection of works.

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StreetScape Kor

8 years ago

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No mention of the hundreds of posthumous paintings done "in the style of" Rembrandt. Many of which are still pass as authentic Rembradts. You don't need a computer scientist to do this.

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1stlvl Humanoid

8 years ago

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Feed an AI data from many artists across many mediums: film, painting, music, theater, sculpture, etc. Let it combine inspirations into whatever medium it wants and give it the tools to express it's amalgamations.

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Juan Cano

8 years ago

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Amazing work. Sadly, in 3 months it will be a phone app. ;-)

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