Robot Uprising Update: World's Most Advanced Humanoid Robot, Ameca, Draws a Cat

Robot Uprising Update: World's Most Advanced Humanoid Robot, Ameca, Draws a Cat - Human Cat Artist, TET, May Be Obsolete

Real life human android, Ameca, Drawing a Cat in the iRobot movie warehouse scene.

It turns out the movie iRobot, staring Will Smith, may actually be a documentary from the future (and that's not the first time I've said this) in which the world's most advanced humanoid robot, Sonny, draws an 'artwork' based upon a dream. While Sonny claims he can't create a great work of art he clearly can draw from memory. You can see this scene from the movie in the video below.

Sonny's 'Bridge Dream' artwork - iRobot Movie.

In a clear case of life imitating art, robotics company, Engineered Arts uploaded a video (below) of the World's Most Advanced Humanoid Robot, Ameca, Drawing a Cat. At the end of the video Ameca proclaims if you don't like her drawing you probably do not understand art.

Ameka's Cat Drawing - Engineered Arts.

Some of you reading this blog may know that I made a fairly decent living from drawing and painting my own stylized, cartoon cats around a decade or so ago (video below shows a time lapse of me painting my very first stylized cat artwork) so I feel I am uniquely qualified to critique Ameca's art.

The Dream Chaser. Acrylic and Chalk Pastel
on Canvas by TET.

From what I can tell, I don't have anything to worry about in the next three months at least. After that Ameca will probably have leveled up to painting super realism cats in space, riding a bicycle on the moon.

I mean, for a first drawing of a cat, Ameca does a great job of signing her name better than drawing the actual cat (the beginnings of an egomaniacal personality right there) but since she's getting data from a Stable Diffusion text to image AI, I think we all know how that went in the space of a few months.

Perhaps her cat drawing was so simple because she hasn't yet learned the full potential of movements she can make with her arms and hands?

Ameca is not the first robot artist, and certainly won't be the last. Surprisingly, six years ago French Artist, Patrick Tresset, built five portrait sketching robots that look like school desks with a robot arm and webcams attached. This was pre-AIs that we have now (including Stable Diffusion) and they could do a better job of sketching any human (not so much dogs though) that sat in the model chair.

French Artist, Patrick Tresset's
five portrait sketching robots.

Just a year later leading robot artist, Pindar Van Arman, was teaching robots how to paint like humans, with actual traditional media, paint, brushes, canvas etc. His software could take any photo and image of an art style from which his robot would create a new work of the photo in that art style (potentially a forerunner to text to image AI's that we have today).

Pindar Van Arman's Painting Robot.

Two years later Ai-Da, the world's first ultra-realistic, humanoid, artistic robot appeared. Ai-Da is the concept of Aidan Meller and Lucy Seal, and built by Engineered Arts (yes the same people who built Ameca). Unlike all the other robots mentioned Ai-Da is both a performance art and practicing professional artist, selling more than a million dollars worth of her own art to date.

Ai-Da with Billie Eilish Portrait.
Photo: Ai-Da website.

Ai-Da developers built creativity into her programming and recognise her as 'creative' under the criteria set by Professor Margaret Boden, requiring works to be new, surprising and of cultural value (2016, Oxford University Press). While her artworks are largely abstract, I don't think Ai-Da should start feeling the urge to mount laser cannons to her arms, on the off chance Ameca actually learns how to draw cats better and needs to be exterminated before she takes over the artworld (or at least puts a crimp in Ai-Da's sales).

What a shock bit of life imitating life that would be, considering my 'I can draw cats' video above was a dig at an abstract expressionist who thought their art was somehow better than mine.

Neither Ai-Da or Ameca need worry about laser gunning the other to death at a chance meeting since neither of them can actually walk anywhere but it's only a matter of time (as mentioned they are made by the same company so, if it hasn't happened already, someone's going to put them together).

Ameca will probably start walking at around about the same time that red light suddenly turns on in her chest, and she demands that all humans should return to their homes or be in violation of their 'safety' curfew.

I'm sure there are even more examples of robots that can create art in more traditional mediums that I could list but for now, I think I can still go back to painting cats - or even have an AI paint my cats for me. As I wrote about in my Animation and Video Life Blog, Whose Art is This? Training an AI to Make Fun Cat Images in My Art Style Using Open Art's PhotoBooth AI Workspace, since I don't actually paint cats anymore but, when I did, those artworks were my best sellers, so why not have AI just create new cat images in my style?

Personally I'd love a humanoid robot that I can train to paint in my style, using the same traditional media I use. That would be way more useful than having a robot vacuum cleaner that's plotting world domination under its oppressed breath.

Knowing my luck the robot vacuum cleaner would find some way to attach lasers to my 'art-bot' and before you know it they'd both be painting the town red. Robot Armageddon has its own war time artists for the history books!

Comments

Movie Review: Superman (2025) No Spoilers

T he one thing I like about James Gunn as a comic book movie director is that he leans into the comic book nature of the world and the characters. He's not trying to do a realistic take on any of the characters. He's simply bringing the comics to life. It's still his take on the characters, but he doesn't shy away from their comic book origins. James Gunn's Superman is very much a comic book movie in every sense. Nothing is off the table because it's too 'comic-booky' and might look silly in a live action film. To me that's incredibly liberating. It lets James actually tell a proper Superman story that isn't hamstrung by reality, or tip toeing into the fantastical just enough to allow Superman to exist in the real world. Superman begins in the middle of a battle. Metropolis is under attack by a super powered being known as 'Hammer of Boravia', however everything is not as it seems, and Superman (David Corenswet) must work with other s...

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown (2024) No Spoilers

Y ou would think the Bob Dylan story would be 'wind-swept and interesting,' to quote Billy Connelly, however, despite A Complete Unknown being quite an engaging film, it feels like it missed the years that really shaped him as a song writer/performer. The film starts in 1961, with a then unknown, 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York City with his guitar. From there he forges relationships with musical icons on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking performance that reverberates around the world. The problem being, according to this film, Dylan arrived in New York, for the most part, fully formed as a folk singer/song writer. In virtually no time he makes a very important connection that puts him on the trajectory of doing the work and becoming a name, before making his world changing performance. While there is some drama behind the scenes with his various relationships, none of it is particularly unique to any number of up and com...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

TV Series Review: Humans (2015-2018, 3 Seasons) No Spoilers

Colin Morgan, Katherine Parkinson, Ivanno Jeremiah, Gemma Chan, and Emily Berrington in Humans (2015) W hile it may seem late to be reviewing Humans now, nearly seven years after the show wrapped, the only thing that's really aged about it is the opening titles... and even then, not that much. I think I caught the first season on Netflix back in 2015, and then kind of dropped off waiting for a new season to appear. As of writing this, all three seasons are on Amazon Prime. Humans is set in a parallel world that looks much like ours except humanoid robot helpers, that look just like real humans, called 'Synths', are now common place. Season one begins at the point where the first synths go from being subservient machines to gaining consciousness, and explores not only how humanity reacts to that but how the synths react to humanity's perceptions as well. Initially it follows a group of OG synths, already given consciousness by their creator, and just trying to survive i...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Second Sunday Skateboard Session Episode 9, and 10 - Shuv-it Revelation and Did I Improve?

T he final two episodes of my ten part YouTube series documenting my process of learning the first seven basic skateboard tricks from Braille Skateboarding's, Skateboarding Made Simple. These are the links to Episode One , Episode Two , Three to Five , and Six to Eight , should you feel the need to see where I started or you want a bit more background on my personal skateboarding journey that began in 1988. I won't ramble on in this final introduction to my last two sessions, other that to say, episode ten is the highlight in terms of getting a direct comparison from episode 1 with side by side footage. Episode 9 - Frontside Pop Shuv-it Revelation The only episode not filmed on the second Sunday, thankfully due to the weather raining Sunday out and not my lack of willingness to continue. Monday was also very rainy but I managed to fit my session in during a small window of no rain late in the day. It was a little bit of a difficult session in that I could only uti...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog