The Painting Fool is a deep learning computer program created with the aim of ‘being taken seriously as an artist’. The question is, can a program following instructions given to it by a human ever be considered truly creative? After all, surprisingly complex behaviours can come from the simplest of rules. One such example is the flocking of Starlings, where there is no overall control of the group but instead a ‘hivemind’ is in operation – each bird keeps track of its 6 or 7 closest neighbours in the flock, and changes direction synchronously. It is easy to imagine how in a similar way, a few simple rules in a software program can create unforeseen images. This is known as machine generated imaging, and is not to be confused with computer generated imaging (CGI). read more