Artificially intelligent

Last year, I was having lunch with a friend from business school (i.e. from 2 decades ago) who’s also an entrepreneur. And by that I mean, he actually managed to scale and exit — I’m still at the scaling part. In any event, we were discussing AI, hot topic if there ever was one, and he was telling me about the team he put together to work on AI-based projects. The first one was a virtual artist. We brainstormed a little — I happen to know a bit about the art world — and went off our merry ways.

A few months later, we had lunch again: this time, we went into more details as his project had become far more concrete. To the point that he asked if I would be interested in working on it with him. You know me: I’ll never say no to a project, unless that project entails illicit stuff in Latin America (if that). And se we started working and interacting on the several ideas that were on the table: AI is a pretty large field, if you watched the news.

A few days ago, we launched our first project: The drawing AI. The pitch is real simple (and rather implicit): an AI that draws portraits of personalities. The original portrait is AI, the drawing animation is AI, everything is AI: we’re not lying over here. And we picked a pretty good first portrait to draw, if I may: President Barack Obama in the — artificial —  flesh. So there you have it: part of my time is now dedicated to choosing which celebrity to draw (or, rather, have the AI draw) and then post it around to see how well it tracks. You’ll be pleased to find out that Barack Obama beat Leo DiCaprio. So far.

This is just the first project that is out there: there are a couple more in the works. AI technology is changing so incredibly quickly that the realm of possibilities basically doubles every couple of months. So, watch this space, and enjoy, like, share in the meantime!

PS. If you have feedback, happy to get. Especially if it’s positive.