The (r)evolution of Creative Artificial Intelligence

Published in

Le Wagon

9 min readMay 27, 2020

An unprecedented change in creativity is emerging before our eyes: that of creative artificial intelligence. This (r)evolution will lead to an unstoppable change in all the universes and industries of design, photo, music and video — and it will lead us back to a great return to creativity.

The worlds of creativity have been in constant evolution since the beginning, from paintings, to sculpture, then photography with the arrival of film, and, ultimately, the great boom with the arrival of IT! In recent years, a whole new opportunity is gradually opening up of which we have only tapped a tiny part of its immense potential. This IT boom will be even bigger! It is the link of artificial intelligence technologies with creative minds.

At the end of 2018 I presented my vision of artificial intelligence (AI), its state of the art, as well as the first examples of creations coupled with creative AI.
📖 Read: Creative Artificial Intelligence… Towards New Horizons

Here is my update 1 year later.

It is generally accepted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen as one of the main challenges of the XXI century as it begins to impact our lifestyles. Much more than an issue of fundamental scientific research, the use of — machine learning is finding its first concrete applications in fields as diverse as the military, healthcare, self-driving vehicles, space exploration, smart cities or the statistical treatment of problems. endemic social issues (unemployment, poverty, etc.). More recently in this unprecedented period of a global health crisis which we are currently experiencing with Covid-19, AI is helping us to anticipate, prevent and fight this virus.

In this context which favors the emergence of AI, France is contributing greatly, thanks to the quality of its specialists: Yann Lecun who heads the AI laboratory of Facebook, as well as winner of the Turing Prize on March 27; Jérôme Pesenti, who can be credited with the IBM Watson program; Luc Julia who is the co-inventor of Apple’s Siri and is now vice-president in charge of innovation at Samsung; Aurélie Jean, the new rising French star researcher and entrepreneur specializing in algorithms. To this excellence in AI research is added a unanimously recognized creative know-how: there are numerous creatives, designers, advertisers, filmmakers, architects, cooks, artists, musicians who shine — the French Touch around the world which greatly influences their respective fields of activity.

In the creative world, we are at the dawn of a major revolution thanks to innovations in the field of machine learning and deep learning.

This paradigm shift opens up new creative horizons in terms of design, cybernetic art, music, writing, imagery, and video. The coming wave will be unprecedented, and the change unstoppable, marking the great return of creativity to the core of human development processes. This is a global consensus, and bodes well for an upcoming revolution in creative practices, all thanks to AI.

Let’s define this new concept — creative AI as a technology based on the use of machine learning with the underlying objective of automating the repetitive tasks of creative production. With these significant time-saving processes, this technology favors the development of creativity, thanks to an algorithmic tool for processing possibilities offering new creative perspectives, all of which considerably enrich the creative process. Behind the creative AI there will always be a Human there to guide, correct and choose the best direction to take.

One question still remains on the lips of many creatives, artists, producers, directors and creative agencies:

« Will robots steal the work of creatives ? » The answer is NO !

On the contrary, the evolution of creative artificial intelligence will improve the daily lives of creatives:

Creative AI will open up a better world for all creatives.

Here are the 3 keys to these new perspectives:

A creative AI that will increase our creativity tenfold

AI through the processing of “data” will allow us to gradually decipher the concepts of idea, emotions, and to reinvent ourselves by creating ever more originality. Until now, our creativity was limited to our intelligence, but today it is closely linked to technology. The possibilities are endless and we will hereafter witness the advent of a — super creative intelligence.

A creative AI that will generate new professions

Creative professions bogged down by laborious and repetitive tasks will evolve by putting people in a position of supervision as a coach, teacher or expert. At the same time, there will be the advent of entirely new professions allowing us to design AI according to our needs, such as Creative Engineer or Data Creative. On a final note, the careers that require expertise and substantial human added value will be preserved.

An ethical and responsible AI

Creative AI will incite us to come together regarding the need for ethical and responsible AI which will significantly impact our lifestyles. Indeed, the generalization of AI can significantly improve the functioning of our businesses by eliminating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. The time saved must be of benefit to all, regardless of class, thus gradually reducing the gap between poor and wealthy people, between sad and happy people, between uninspired artists and imaginative artists. It’s definitely a better world that is opening up before us, a world that guarantees an increase in the quality of life and working conditions.

AI + creativity + video?

Aive, the future of video

As you have noticed, today I am dedicated to my new entrepreneurial adventure: Aive www.aive.com

Aive is the acronym of — **Artificial Intelligence for Video Experience**.

Thanks to its creative artificial intelligence technology specialized in video, Aive automates the post-production of videos in a qualitative way, as well as their distribution on a large scale.

Aive’s mission is to become the world’s largest video creation studio thanks to its uniquely creative artificial intelligence. Aive will generate the future of video and unleash creativity.

The Aive adventure is incredibly exciting! The technology is still being created and will come to life by the end of 2020.

This new adventure in global ambition includes Rudy Lellouche, with whom I have been evolving for more than 10 years and who has been with me on every one of my startups from Airtist to Teads.

Aive is a team of excellent engineers of the best in Data-Science, Back-end and Front-end. Meet the Aive Team !
Speaking of which, I take this opportunity to specify that despite Covid-19, we continue to hire the best Data-Scientists and Back-end developers ;-) Come join the adventure!
Check out Aive Jobs.

We at Aive deeply believe in the capacity of AI, and more particularly of creative AI, to emerge and bring about a paradigm shift in the very near future. We also believe that France brings together all the elements necessary for this cognitive revolution through increased creativity. By the quality of its research and training, by the determination of its entrepreneurial ecosystem, or even its historical positioning as the land of arts and literature, it can be the spearhead of this profound change in approaches to creative expression.

The gateway is open.

(video) Conference on Creative AI, 2019

I now invite you to watch my 2nd conference on Creative Artificial Intelligence at the IT coding school Le Wagon in Paris, a fantastic school where I previously had the opportunity to learn coding.
I also invite you to read my feedback on that exprience because it changed my life ! 📖 Read : Entrepreneurs, Managers : Learning to Code and It Will Change Your Life!

Access the official site :
Le Wagon — Learn Coding

🎥 Video of the conference on Créative AI, 2019–1h12min

Previous edition :
Rewatch the conference Creaive AI 2018

To go further…

I have gathered here all the recent experiments and creative innovations attributed to AI which were presented during this conference in August 2019, and which really surprised and inspired me!

Side note from May 2020: Since last summer I have discovered new creative nuggets with AI … I will share them with you in a future article;)

1. AI to generate an original idea

An AI that completes your text by imagining the rest
• https://talktotransformer.com

2. AI to generate music and sounds

The French startup Matchtune released a piece of fully generated music entitled ANNA 2:55.
•https://medium.com/@muzeekinc/muzeek-sort-anna-2-55-le-premier-album-dun-compositeur-augment%C3%A9-1b710e8f534c
• https://www.matchtune.com/

Generation of a synthetic voice from a real voice
Real-Time Voice Cloning by CorentinJ
Clone a voice in 5 seconds to generate arbitrary speech in real-time
• Github: https://github.com/CorentinJ/Real-Time-Voice-Cloning

3. AI to draw and create art

An AI experimenting with an artistic work entitled EONS, thanks to the generation in Machine Learning by Mike Tyka
• http://www.miketyka.com/?p=eons
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/mtyka

Transform drawings into life-like photographs
GauGAN Turns Doodles into Stunning, Photorealistic Landscapes
• Nvidia: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/03/18/gaugan-photorealistic-landscapes-nvidia-research/?ncid=so-you-n1-78256

4. AI to generate images

The French startup Meero and its AI in post-production photography
• https://www.meero.com/fr/technology

An AI which restores and modifies faces
SC-FEGAN by run-youngjoo
• GitHub: https://github.com/run-youngjoo/SC-FEGAN

5. AI to generate videos

The latest developments in « deepfake » video by Egor Zakharov.
Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models
• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08233v1

Animate a face from a single photograph by Egor Zakharov.
Few-Shot Adversarial Learning of Realistic Neural Talking Head Models
• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08233v1

Deepfake video with Barack Obama by Jordan Peele and BuzzFeed team
• More information: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/obama-jordan-peele-deepfake-video-debunk-buzzfeed

An AI which genrates a Chinese TV journalist synchronized with sound and image
• Xinhua agency: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-06/15/c_138146148.htm

An AI which generates the « gestures » of a person based on voice.
Learning Individual Styles of Conversational Gesture
• http://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~shiry/projects/speech2gesture/

AI that animates in 3D from a single photo by Chung-Yi Weng, University of Washington
• https://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/wakeup/

Video generated by an AI which mixes techniques of style-transfer, 3D and drawings by Quart Avant Poing
• More https://vimeo.com/user2107999

Examples of 3D realizations for the series “Love, Death & Robots” on Netflix. Amazing inspirations which combine AI & 3D
• Blur Studio, Unit Image, Sony Pictures Imageworks

An AI which creates the ideal script for a commercial for a LEXUS car model
• Article https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/11/16/lexus-reveals-ad-created-ai-it-gimmick-no-will-it-win-any-awards-probably-not

To conclude, here is my presentation deck on creative artificial intelligence introduced during my conference in August 2019.