Artificial Intelligence: A New Working Environment for Creators?

By 2030, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to increase global gdP by 14% – or by 15.7 thousand billion dollars – making it the most significant commercial opportunity in today’s economy (PwC 2017). Companies in Asia have already invested $39b in artificial intelligence. This technology promises to revolutionize our transportation, medicine, education, finance, defence and manufacturing. But, what impact will AI have on the creative sector? The data that feeds AI machines is the fruit of human creativity. Today, this information is being used to create new cultural expressions: songs (AIvA, Amper), short stories (Sheherazade), film scripts (benjamin) and paintings (CAN) – often to a surprisingly high standard. for the very first time in October 2018, a painting, “Edmond de belamy,” which depicts a fictional man created by an algorithm (generative Adversarial Networks, known as gANs, was auctioned by Christie’s and sold for $432,500. These developments raise important questions about the status of artists, the integrity of the cultural value chain and the sector’s ability to continue providing decent jobs and fairly remunerate artists for their creative work. The public sector may lose its agency in the creative sector if it fails to adopt a targeted plan to address the rise and market concentration of large platforms or the lack of transparency in the collection and use of data generated for and by AI algorithms.