Mark Milloff, a noted painter and art professor at the Rhode Island College of Design, is one of the critics of the program's painting of a Rembrandt because it copied the work of a dead artist."For me, that's just a technological trick," Milloff tellsBut did Magenta create an original work of art with the synthesizer melody at Moogfest? Milloff says yes, but adds that the humans were the ultimate artists.
Ali Momeni, an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University who frequently uses technology to explore themes in his artwork, says Magenta is just the latest in a long line of innovators to challenge assumptions about art. Momeni sees the new AI-driven art as a progeny to the 20th-century artistic traditions forged by Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollock in pushing the boundaries of what art is.
"I don't consider the robot to be the artist, like how I don't consider the chimp as an artist. The robots can be used by artists to make art, however," Ryskin says.