I've been intrigued by this idea of computers creating art. And not electric sheep those are just people creating art then computers building and sharing it, I don't like it.

The idea of using genetic algorithms to reproduce art is interesting, the idea of computers manipulating images to create new art from old art is also cool(automagically). I've been playing around with it.

I think computers originating great art is synonymous with the search for general AI. (Not going to happen, IMO)

I agree, but my argument is based on semantics. I believe when one creates "Artificial" intelligence, it isn't really artificial. I don't think intelligence cares what medium caries out the function of being intelligent.

As for art - computers are just as able to create art as humans, but only because so many people define art from the observer's perspective. If a person is inspired by an image, it shouldn't matter that it was nothing more than some pixel shifting algorithm reshaping a random google image selection.

I have seen the genetic algorithm demo of mona lisa and its pretty cool. My problem with it is that using genetic algorithm for something like that seems "forced" because there's no real "evolution" involved in it.

Would it be possible to use genetic algorithm to .. say, evolve a face by beautifying it? by "mating" it with anther face? It would be an interesting experiment. Perhaps I'll explore this concept in code.

Yes! Though activity seems to have died down of late:

http://facemaker.redshiftmedia.com/

Facinating! this is pretty awesome. It'll be cool if there's a way to generate synthetic realistic images from this.

That's because it's not a GA, as far as I can tell, it's just a hill-climbing algorithm. That's not to say it isn't cool, but it's not GA.

There are also a bunch of articles out there confusing GA and A/B testing.

Hrmph! </curmudgeon>