In this talk, "The Rebirth of the Author," I examine how the A.I. art revolution could lead us to revalue human intention, process, and personal narrative in art, redefining what we consider meaningful and valuable in works of art, while assessing the potential problems in transparency and inclusivity in the arts industries.

Speaker: Lily Higham

Discover how dreams could be the key to AI consciousness in this thought-provoking interactive talk.

Speaker: Oliver Sprigg

Listen to our podcast with Oliver about his project here: https://www.scottishai.com/podcasts

AI writes bad jokes and so do I. AI's not as a genie in a lamp, it's sandbox to play in.

Speaker: Josh Thorpe

Listen to our podcast with Josh about his project here: https://www.scottishai.com/podcasts

A live AV performance that explores AI tools with glitch-led processes.

Artist: Jess Aslan

In response to the conflicting attitudes surrounding AI, my work seeks to explore the paradox between fear and fascination. On one hand, AI is often criticized, with many claiming it can never replace the authenticity of human creativity. On the other hand, we unknowingly engage with AI-generated content daily—whether in videos, written texts, or even deepfake images that pass as truth. My project aims to shed light on this contradiction and invite viewers to critically explore the possibilities of AI. Rather than fearing it, I want to encourage understanding—because fear is often rooted in ignorance.

At the centre of my piece is the fictional "Fictosaurus," a dinosaur species entirely fabricated through AI. The Fictosaurus was "discovered" from a collection of rocks I found in my hometown, which I then transformed into dinosaur skull illustrations using an AI image generator. These illustrations serve as the visual foundation for my work, blending natural, mundane objects with the fantastical power of AI-driven creation.

The project challenges viewers to think critically about the media they consume. In an age where people increasingly trust information from social media platforms without question, my piece asks: "How easily are you deceived?" By presenting something as absurd as a fictional dinosaur through credible-looking images, video, and text, I want viewers to recognize the danger of accepting information at face value, even when it appears to come from trusted sources. Ultimately, my goal is not to demonize AI, but to encourage a deeper understanding of its potential and its risks.

The Fictosaurus is both a cautionary tale and an invitation—to be sceptical, to be curious, and to learn about the technologies shaping our future, before fear takes over.

Artist: Balandžiūnaitė

Listen to our podcast with Agnė about Fictosaurus here: https://www.scottishai.com/podcasts

The Machine Whispers exhibition interrogates the relationship between AI technologies and human language, exploring how AI tools such as ChatGPT can generate dangerously inaccurate or biased content (LEX-9000), how seemingly helpful and timesaving translation and editing tools can fundamentally change the meaning of language (Machine Whispers), and how the economic value of language-as-data governs online information flows (The Word Exchange).

Artists: Pip Thornton, Evan Morgan, and Ray Interactive

ChatGPT was not created to write music, which is exactly why I've been making it do just that. My 2023 project, for my MFA at the University of Oxford, included a set of five short pieces of music written by ChatGPT and painstakingly transcribed to sheet music by me. Since completing my MFA, I've been taking this a step further - asking ChatGPT to write an entire symphony inspired by the theme of black holes.

I'm currently on the first movement, "Approaching Darkness", with 20 instrumental parts being dictated by ChatGPT so far (although this may increase, as it seems to like adding more parts out of nowhere every so often).

The aim of this project is to critically examine the intersection between AI and the creative arts. I have deliberately minimised my own input, asking ChatGPT to provide everything from the featured instruments to the key, time signature and dynamics of the score. The only thing I have decided is the motif of the black hole - an astrophysical singularity, symbolic of the "technological singularity" as it pertains to AI.

Artist: India Bruckner

Algorithms and the aleatory: making no sense, nonsense, and new sense of an area of poetic exploration.

Artist: Iona Lee

The very first karaoke sing-along misheard-lyrics AI painter in the world!

The plethora of AI tool availability outlines future creative spaces; where every person can create experiences through the combined use of AI tools, and augment their creative output.

Working within the creative space framed by the AI & Storytelling library, we present “I Can’t Sing. You Can’t Draw.” A tool for visualising what you sing, as you sing it. Packaged in a Jupyter Notebook, easily run through a browser, and with no need for programming skills, the tool presents a starting place for people to see the workings of an AI system. And a starting place for their own creative machinations, as the tool is easy to take home and continue working with, or just ready to run for your next karaoke party.

Members of the audience are invited to sing along into the microphone and watch as AI scrambles to understand what we are singing, and turn it into images in real time! And there is no need to know the original lyrics, creativity and improvisation when singing will work just as well.

Artists: Pavlos Andreadis and Paolo Pareti

We welcome you to a ripple through the latent space of a large language model, visually and sonically activating bits of words through the flocking dynamics of birds. Utilising a depth camera and building upon 3D game engine software developed through previous artworks (Koterwas’s Tactile Intelligence, all the boys ate a fish), this installation places you within a virtual 3d representation of the structure of a Large Language Model and respond to their movements. When a visitor moves their arm, for example, the language tokens in the corresponding space are disturbed, lighting up and sounding through text to speech. Utilising the mathematics of flocking behaviour, a pattern then radiates outward from this disturbed area to trigger other tokens in its path

This is language, but not assembled through rational logic, but the patterns of bodies working together: that of the visitor and those of the flock. The visitor becomes like the conductor of a symphony, but without a score to work from, just the intuition of movement, muscle memory and spatial awareness, exploring the space of an ‘other mind’ (the LLM) through the way other minds (birds) communicate and coordinate movement with their bodies.

We encourage you to engage in language kinaesthetically and draw on animal communication as inspiration and metaphor for broadening consideration of how AI conceptualises language and the roles it might play in both facilitating and limiting thought and expression. When Sonny replies to Will Smith’s character ‘can you?’ the implication is of course, ‘no’, and that judging any individual’s ability against such extraordinary accomplishments is unfair. However, Smith’s original question holds up symphonies and masterpiece paintings as exemplars of humanity’s ability to creatively express oneself. This installation proposes they are artefacts of something more essential to what it means to be human: the ability to experience and shape thought and expression through movement and embodied interactions with others in both physical and conceptual space.

Artist: Ted Koterwas

‘Death of the A(I)uthor’ aims to investigate to what extent does knowledge of AI authorship vs human authorship impact our perception and value of art. We encourage you to participate in a small study via a QR code next to the display. Please note that all responses will remain anonymous.

The property ‘human-made’ is poised to become increasingly valuable in a world where AI generated content saturates creative spaces… Or will it? At one extreme, some people feel that creative intent and authorship plays no role in the meaning of an artwork – all that matters is the viewer’s experience. In literature, this theory is called Death of the Author (from Roland Barthes’ eponymous essay). At the other extreme, some people’s experience of art is fully dependent on the knowledge of the artist and their intent from which they draw richer meaning and value. In the age of generative AI, this spectrum of experience is given a new dimension – the ‘AI creator’. Is it a soulless, tireless machine, churning out cheap knockoffs and stolen ideas, or an amalgamation of humanity’s creative expressions, distilled into a pure, singular synthetic artist? Perhaps both, or neither? More importantly, does it even matter to the viewer? And if it does, what should we do about it?

Artist: Jemima Goodall

As a technologist and artist, I use abstract art as an outlet for my own technical understanding. Instead of using AI to produce or collaborate on my art, I use my artistic ability to determine how AI works such as Gen AI, AGI, and ML. Empathy over creativity. Mindful balance not mental separation. This is core to the way I work.

Artist: Manesh Mistry

Courtney Bullock’s latest project includes the social media docu-series ‘AI & ART/ISTS’ that explores how digital technology, particularly generative AI, is impacting art and artists.

Artist: Courtney Bullock

This audio-sculptural installation presents a dialogue between a writer (myself) and a language model trained on and supplemented by two decades of my writing, from essays and journals to fiction, poetry, and even emails. Our conversation highlights not only the limitations and absurdities of AI mimicry but also surprising insights about what our written output does, and does not, say about us.

This uncanny dialogue critiques the models’ hallucinations and obsessions, homogeneity, and tendency to dwell on the dark, dramatic, and macabre. At the same time, the interaction reveals insights into my own writing, not all of them flattering. I grapple with the realization that the model’s inability to describe a happy childhood links to a gap in my writing about any positive aspects of my own, although there were many, and realize that it acquired some of its most obnoxious habits—like its constant and needless apologizing—from me.

Artist: Sarah Immel

‘In Translucence’ is an interactive, live installation piece which explores how technologies such as AI might drift towards a state where they are no longer visible to their end users, but rather function largely undetected, translucent, absorbed into an amalgam of tools we simply consider 'technology'. While this might be useful in some cases, it opens the door to important ethical questions about how the technology is used and who it serves, which this artwork hopes to question.

Viewers enter the installation space and observe a large CRT display resting on a white plinth in the centre of the space. Upon closer inspection of the camera feed, viewers notice that while they themselves are present in the CCTV-like image, the display and the machine attached to it are not, having curiously been erased from view. The machine is caught in the act of hiding itself – creatively using live AI image generation to in-paint an estimation of what the scene might look like were the machine invisible – and this ‘active camouflage’ becomes obvious, inviting viewers to experiment within the camera feed, forcing the machine to make glitchy mistakes.

The camera feed isn't recording and everything is running entirely offline.

Artist: Nathan Smith

The Scottish AI Alliance partnered with the Glasgow School of Art on the project ‘Exploring Future Transitions of Generative AI In the Climate Crisis Through Design’ - a small exhibition which explores the environmental impacts of generative AI through the lenses of consumption, waste, governance and communities. Through participatory prototypes and public engagement, students developed creative tools to foster AI literacy and inspire sustainable behaviours aligned with Scotland’s net-zero goals.

Artist: Glasgow School of Art students