Artists help us to navigate profound change surrounding new and emerging technology, including the most current developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Long before the current generative AI boom, a community of artists were changing the way we think of AI, combining powerful activism with inventive exploration. They devise alternative futures, and champion ethical and community-led approaches to generative AI. This is a vital source of collective sense making and distributed, bottom-up leadership.

The New Real champions the voice of artists in informing AI policy and development. In this event, The New Real’s Creative Agent, Caroline Sinders, convenes a group of practitioners who work on and with AI, to explore how to navigate these turbulent times. Together they will explore future landscapes for creative AI and what co-creation between AI and artists will look like in the future.

Critical AI artists provide an essential reference point and source of inspiration, and yet these voices do not always reach policy makers, commercial developers, or scientists in the lab. At this critical moment in generative and creative AI, it is important to reflect on who and how is included and excluded from its development and how art can help establish new modes of inclusive and collective leadership in this field. 

This event will also introduce The New Real’s vision for the coming decade of transformative AI Art, and launch The New Real Editions, an exciting new online magazine format for critical and creative exploration of AI, that includes a reference guide for cultural organisations on working with AI. The New Real Editions’ editor, journalist, researcher and author, Gemma Milne, will introduce key insights from the first edition and frame the plans for the future ones. 

Alongside the Salon, we will host an afternoon workshop to support artists, curators, technicians, festivals, venues, funders and audiences in the uptake of actionable insights and strategies for navigating generative AI. The workshop will disseminate best practice, strategies, recommendations and signposts to practitioners new to AI, and promoting legible, accessible, open tools and models for artists, through The New Real’s concept of Experiential AI. If you are interested to participate in the workshop, please email newreal@ed.ac.uk as soon as possible; we will finalise the participants list by 20th October 2023.

Important notice: This event will be photographed/recorded, and images may be used for future marketing, promotional or archive purposes. If you would prefer not to be photographed, please let us know at the event.