Robot Artist Ai-Da participates in UK Parliament

Robot Artist Ai-Da makes history as the first robot to speak at the UK Parliament after her address at the House of Lords on October 12.

She was accompanied by her creator, Aidan Meller, at a meeting of the Communications and Digital Committee, to provide evidence on the impact of technology on creative industries.

“I thought, is it actually possible that we could critique, comment, and look at this world of technology by actually the technology speaking for itself?,” Meller said during his introduction of Ai-Da in the session

During the session, she gave prepared answers to pre-submitted questions. This was done to ensure the A.I language model’s answers were of a higher quality.

“The role of technology in creating art will continue to grow as artists find new ways to use technology to express themselves, and reflect and explore the relationship between technology, society, and culture,” Ai-Da said.

When Baroness Featherstone, of the Liberal Democrats Party, asked Meller if he was the “puppetmaster” of Ai-Da, he explained that the robot’s utilized dataset could be as vast as the whole internet.

““I’ll give an example of how far-reaching this is, which is very upsetting for humans,”

“We actually do ask her about the work, what she would like to do and what her ideas are for it. We are able to get quite a collaborative conversation going about what potential areas of data she could look at.” 

Ai-Da was developed in 2019 by Cornish robotics company Engineered Arts and computer A.I. researchers at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham. 

Meller describes it as a contemporary art project intended to explore the artistic potential of A.I.

During recent years Ai-Da made headlines multiple times for a number of artworks, including a portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations.