On October 23, 2021 an exhibition presented by the organization Art D’Egypte in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism, took place at the Great Pyramids of Giza in Cairo, where Ai-Da was a part of the event.

Ai-Da Robot conceived by Aidan Meller. Photo Credits: Frieze

However, are we inclined to associate AI with art or poetry? Well, Ai-Da can create it. She is a highly realistic robot, which was invented by Aidan Mellar in Oxford, central England and she spends most of her time writing poems and creating art.  On Friday she even gave a public performance of poetry she wrote, using her own algorithms in celebration of the great Italian poet Dante.
The event took place at the University of Oxford’s renowned Ashmolean Museum as part of an exhibition marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.

Her poem was inspired and produced as a response to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. Ai-Da’s poem was described as “deeply emotive” by her creator Meller and includes the following verse:

“We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives,

Sent out to seek the light; but it never came

A needle and thread would be necessary

For the completion of the picture.

To view the poor creatures, who were in misery,

That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut.”

According to Mellar, his robot’s ability to imitate human writing is “so great, if you read it you wouldn’t know that it wasn’t written by a human”. He shared that when AZi-Da was reading her poem on Friday evening “it was easy to forget that you’re not dealing with a human being.”

“The Ai-Da project was developed to address the debate over the ethics of further developing AI to imitate humans and human behavior,” Meller told CNN. “It’s finally dawning on us all that technology is having a major impact on all aspects of life and we’re seeking to understand just how much this technology can do and what it can teach us about ourselves.”

Meller said one key thing he and the team that work with Ai-Da have learned while developing her is that the project hasn’t taught them how “human she is — but it’s shown us how robotic we are as humans.” By watching her behaviour, which was based on the way a real human being behaves in their everyday life, even for a second, you can think that the actual robots actually are us.  Meller also commented:

“Through Ai-Da and through the use of AI, we can learn more about ourselves than ever before — Ai-Da allows us to gain a new insight into our own patterns and our own habits, as we see her imitate them right in front of us.

As we mentioned, Ai-Da can also create artworks which is one of the reasons she is so impressive. She made an artwork for the Dante exhibition titled “Eyes Wide Shut”. It was created in response to an incident in Egypt in October – Egyptian security forces wanted to remove the cameras in her eyes because of their concerns over surveillance and security. Mellar said that the incident showed just how much nervousness there is in the world around technology and its advancements.

Her creator is aware of the concerns over the increasingly advanced development of artificial intelligence but he thinks that “technology on its own is benign — it’s those that control it whose intentions could be morally and ethically questionable.”Mellar said:

“The biggest fear we should have should be of ourselves and the human capability to use technology to oppress, not of the AI itself.”

In his opinion Ai-Da can be a pioneer in the world of AI and her productions will push the boundaries of what can be achieved in technology and will help us to learn more about ourselves thanks to the robot’s eyes.

The W3C describes the Web Audio API as a JavaScript API for creating, shaping, and manipulating sounds directly in a Web browser.

Web Audio API is already widely used by developers creating music and sound effects for Web pages, and the W3C says it is also used for the creation of online musical instruments, for Web games, and for collaborative artworks such as sound installations.

What makes the Web Audio API different is that it has been designed for use for sound creation rather than just the playback of recorded audio. W3C says it “provides a rich set of modular building blocks which web and app developers can combine to create a wide range of applications“. Suggested uses include auditory feedback in user interfaces, musical instruments, soundtracks and effects for entertainment and gaming, teaching, spatial audio for AR and VR, online audio editing apps, crossfading and compression for in-car music management, and audio analysis and visualization.

The acceptance as a standard by W3C is largely a formal move, as the API was already standardized and deployed as a royalty-free feature in Web browsers and other devices and platforms, both on desktop and mobile. In view of this the W3C says creating sound with the Web Audio API has become a dependable, widely deployed, built-in capability, eliminating the need to install plugins or download separate applications.

Looking to the future, the Web Audio Working Group has already started work on Web Audio API v2. They says this will build on and enrich the first version of the API, adding more complex and much-requested features which were insufficiently developed to be included in the first version of the API.