FRIDA, a robotic arm with a paintbrush taped to it, uses AI to collaborate with humans on works of art. Ask FRIDA to paint a picture, and it gets to work putting brush to canvas. FRIDA, named after Frida Kahlo, stands for Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts. Users can direct FRIDA by inputting a text description, submitting other works of art to inspire its style, or uploading a photograph and asking it to paint a representation of it. The team is experimenting with other inputs as well, including audio. They played ABBA's ‘Dancing Queen’ and asked FRIDA to paint it.
The robot uses AI models similar to those powering tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, which generate text or an image, respectively, in response to a prompt. FRIDA simulates how it would paint an image with brush strokes and uses machine learning to evaluate its progress as it works. FRIDA's final products are impressionistic and whimsical. The brushstrokes are bold. They lack the precision sought so often in robotic endeavors. If FRIDA makes a mistake, it riffs on it, incorporating the errant splotch of paint into the end result.
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