Computational Creativity in Art, Images or Videos

Read also: Writing a Master's Thesis in Computational Creativity

Creativity can be found in nature and in humans, but also in computers, and entails to produce something which is new. However, just “newness” isn’t a sufficient condition for us to consider an idea to be creative, it also has to have some value and meaning: If a 2 year old draws some lines on a paper, we rarely consider it to be art; while if a grown-up does the same, we interpret it as having some deeper meaning – and if the grown-up signs the paper with a well-known artist name, we attribute both an underlying meaning and a monetary value to it. Creativity is thus something which isn’t only a result of the effort of a producer, but also very much the result of how the result is viewed by the consumer.

Computational creativity can involve computer programmes that in themselves are creative, but also systems that are able to recognise and access creativity, as well as programmes that assist humans in creative tasks. There are many creativity-supporting systems (e.g., Adobe PhotoShop), and a few systems that themselves (possibly) are creative, such as “The Painting Fool” and “AARON” (two artificial artists). There are also systems that draws art based on textual or musical input (such as Stable Diffusion), or generates music based on images, or systems for automatic captioning of images and videos that produce short texts matching the visual content (with a specific challenge if parts of the texts may need to be emphasised). A master thesis on the topic could address any of these strands and approaches, depending on the student(s) background and interests.