2024-01-20 11:52:58
By Le Figaro with AFP
Published yesterday at 08:00, Updated yesterday at 10:52
Trained in documentary cinema, she quickly uses new digital media (virtual reality, AI) to find “new ways of telling human stories”. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Breaking with the myths of artificial intelligence by subverting it, this is the mission that artist Sandra Rodriguez has given herself, who, thanks to millions of images generated on the Internet, is raising public awareness of the power of this technology.
Plunged in darkness, visitors interact with the walls around them. When they approach, an artificial intelligence (AI) trained on millions of online erotic searches generates a mosaic of pornographic videos that evolve until they present abstract shapes. This is the new creation of Montreal artist Sandra Rodriguez.
The skins are there “uniformly clear” et “smooth”reflecting what the model “sees the most in current pornographic videos”, explains the artist who created a system using several generative AIs producing images from texts, such as Stable Diffusion. Its goal: to highlight “the social biases that exist in mass pornography”.
A few months earlier, she presented in Montreal a conversational robot inspired by the famous American linguist Noam Chomsky whose objective is to “demystify the secrets of AI” by chatting with the public, all in a virtual world. “It is necessary today to create works of art that speak to the public about issues that will affect them tomorrow”supports this creator in her forties who seeks to dispel “fears” but also “the somewhat unrealistic fads”.
“This misuse is almost better than the original reason for which it was created. »
Gauthier Gidel
“Sandra is a hacker in a way”says Gauthier Gidel who works at Mila (the artificial intelligence institute of Quebec). “She will take the tools, try to divert their use and show the world that this diverted use is almost better than the original reason for which it was created”, explains the researcher who collaborates with her on several projects. In her next project, she wants to invite visitors to mix AI with dance, one of the passions of her Montreal childhood.
Born to a Spanish father working in humanitarian aid and a Quebecois mother who was a teacher, Sandra Rodriguez grew up in a cosmopolitan neighborhood of Montreal before spending part of her youth abroad. College in Spain, university in Canada then in Belgium: “it was important for our parents that we be confronted with other ways of thinking, other cultures”says the artist whose older sister now lives in Madrid.
Initially trained in documentary cinema, she quickly uses new digital media (virtual reality, AI) to find “new ways of telling human stories”. At the same time, the young director is developing a research program on the way in which the public reappropriates these new tools and the social impacts that result from them.
For seven years, she lived between Montreal and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the United States, where she taught the very first course dedicated to immersive media production. Today, his works embodying this duality have been awarded at several festivals such as the independent film festival at Sundance or the Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria.
“Think differently”
On April 26, 2023 in Toulouse, screens displaying the logo of Midjourney, an artificial intelligence application allowing the creation of images. LIONEL BONAVENTURE / AFP
Sandra Rodriguez “has this desire to break the limits (of these technologies, editor’s note) and to surpass them, but in an intelligent way, to bring wealth”, underlines Eliane Achcar, creative director at Normal Studio, who collaborates with Sandra Rodriguez. For the artist, thinking about these systems differently allows them to highlight their flaws.
By drawing only on content collected from the internet and their own creations, AIs generating images from text reduce “little by little creativity and the way of thinking differently”, supports Eliane Achcar. Added to this is the issue of plagiarism of the works that these systems use. An issue raised by several artists before the courts.
“We need to take breaks in the development of AI”confides Sandra Rodriguez, who has denounced the massive collection of data for several years. “Not so much because the systems are moving too fast, but because we don’t know who is using them, what data they are using.” “There is a real danger for us as citizens”concludes the artist, worried.
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