james_kobielus
Contributor

Generative AI: The new power tool for creative pros

analysis
Dec 21, 20173 mins
Artificial IntelligenceSoftware Development

Generative AI will drive the next generation of apps for autoprogramming, content development, visual arts, and other creative, design, and engineering activities

Retro Brain smart intelligence
Credit: Thinkstock

Artificial intelligence can generate fresh patterns in data with astonishing speed, efficiency, and verisimilitude. Over the past few years, it has become commonplace for AI to algorithmically generate any object that can be rendered digitally.

Increasingly, this application of AI is being referred to as “generative.” Generative AI will drive the next generation of apps for autoprogramming, content development, visual arts, and other creative, design, and engineering activities.

By 2019, most leading AI providers will offer tools and libraries for building AI-powered natural-language generation, image manipulation, and other generative use cases. Already, generative AI has proven itself—in both research and in commercial applications—in the following areas:

In 2018 and beyond, more solutions will come to market—in all verticals—that use leading-edge AI approaches known as generative adversarial networks (GANs) to algorithmically create digital and analog objects of all sorts with astonishing accuracy.

Before 2019, more providers will roll out GAN-driven tools and workbenches for software programming, computer-aided design, web content development, music composition, image manipulation, video production, and other creative disciplines. And generative photo apps are likely to come to every smart camera application on mobile devices and other mass-market IoT endpoints.

GANs were a massive global research focus in the AI community in 2017. The pace of advances in GAN technology is likely to accelerate in the coming year. And generative design techniques are likely to come into the core curricula of data science, creative, and engineering professions globally.