Week 2 Blog

Generative Adversarial Network

Digitally recreated painting

People are talking about it on Social media for artwork "La Comtesse de Belamy" that was digitally recreated by an algorithm program that learns to generate new images, by being fed into a database of an existing painting. These paintings were created many years ago by masters and now can be recreated digitally. These paintings look very close to the original.

The company introduces people to great art that looks like the original art but not at the high cost.  People can go and buy a great looking Rembrandt painting for $7000 to 10,000 dollars. It’ allows more people to share a great painting that normally would only be seen in a museum. Not all a buyers of art think this is good. Some people think an AI cannot make a high-quality copy.

People are talking about this on Facebook and have different opinions about a company who can make such a close copy of an original painting. Here are several examples:

Example 1 - Just when you thought an art degree couldn’t lose any more value.

Example 2 -  Let the counterfeiting begin.

Example 3-  Extraordinary. Fantastic notion

https://www.facebook.com/Reuters/posts/2096013883752290

Just think of all the great paintings museums have that this company can copy and make money, selling them over and over. This is just a start of what they are able to do with detailed digital formats.

The biggest challenges this company is facing is people getting ahold of great art and copying it. A lot of artists and art sellers could have a hard time in a few years determining which is the original and what is the copy. So, will this make the ordinary person who is not an expert be afraid to buy? Time will only tell.

If I was a brand manager I would promote the quality of the paintings and try and show customers that they can own a beautiful copy of a great museum piece of art. Just for a fraction of the cost. I would try and show customers we are not here to fool or misrepresent the original artist. It would make their great work of art more available to everyone.

I learned from this assignment is that this company and the future of art is changing quickly. It brings a lot of questions with it. Both good and bad. The people who really love art most likely won’t like this at all, but for the others who want to have a great painting, this may be for them. The future of paintings and digital formats is definitely here.