This project revolutionises both the art and the technological worlds by fusing the two together and blurring the line between AI and art. The artwork created by Ai-Da is made to promote discussion about the technological revolution we are in as well as the possible futures of AI.
She is the brainchild of Oxford art gallery owner, Aidan Meller, who named her after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer scientist. Lovelace was a truly remarkable person who has had an incredible impact on the world we live in. The robot Ai-Da was named so in hopes to inspire more women to actively be part of science and technology, where they are under-represented.

Check out everything Ai-Da has been up to by taking a look at her CV here.

Salaheldin AlAbd and I designed Ai-Da’s drawing arm and developed the technology that allows her to create sketches of the person standing in front of her. We implemented smart algorithms that use computer vision to analyse whoever Ai-Da sees, then developed a control system that produces a path for her arm to follow, based on her interpretation.

The method involves turning pixel coordinates into real space coordinates. Her artificial drawing arm was also designed by us two. Through this arm, the drawing algorithm outputs become a physical reality - Ai-Da’s impressionist sketch.

We then worked alongside Engineered Arts (the Cornwall-based company that built the rest of Ai-Da's body) to integrate our drawing system with the body.

After delivering the sketching arm and seeing its impact around the world, we developed the technology that allows her to create artistic paintings of the anyone or anything in front of her. We built a completely new arm for her that is much more capable than the first one, as well as much more sophisticated computer vision algorithms that use colours to process the world Ai-Da sees and make sense out of it.

The new arm now holds a brush and selects paint colours based on her interpretation. She can now produce high-quality expressive paintings that resemble what she can see from the cameras in her eyes.

The press coverage was extensive, an example is the Guardian newspaper here.

Below is an interview I had when Ai-Da was exhibiting at Tate Modern, London.

The exhibition Ai-Da was part of at Tate was aimed at exploring identity through a series of collaborations between herself and the artist Sadie Clayton. They presented workshops, performances and activities looking at the intersections of power, art and identity.

Find out more about that collaboration here.

Ai-Da’s drawings are fragmented to reflect concerns over the potential for depersonalisation in the future as we use new technologies more and more in our daily lives. The technologies are tools, and therefore are open for both positive and negative use by humans. Ai-Da’s drawings are heavily influenced by creative arts in the first half of the twentieth century, including artists Pablo Picasso, Käthe Kollwitz and Max Beckmann, and writers Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. Ai-Da’s work is continuing on in this style, and is therefore deliberately not representational, but instead is abstracted, unsettling and splintered in style.

To much of our surprise, Ai-Da was invited to come to my home country, Egypt, in October 2021. She was invited as a parallel project to Egypt's first ever art exhibition by the Pyramids of Giza in their 4,500 year history, called "Forever is Now".
Forever Is Now is an international art exhibition that both reflects the profound, global influence of ancient Egypt and draws on the ongoing inclusiveness of contemporary cultural practices. The exhibition will showcase works by leading Egyptian and international artists including Stephen Cox, Lorenzo Quinn, Moataz Nasr and Alexander Ponomarev.

Ai-Da had her own sculpture on display at the Pyramids. The 2 x 2.5-metre sculpture is a play on the riddle of the sphinx – “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?” – the answer to which is a human.
“Four legs is when you’re a toddler, two legs is when you’re an adult, and three is when you’re elderly and need a walking stick. So Ai-Da produced an enormous version of herself with three legs. We’re saying that actually, with the new Crispr technology coming through, and the way we can do gene-editing today, life extension is actually very likely. The ancient Egyptians were doing exactly the same thing with mummification. Humans haven’t changed: we still have the desire to live for ever."

We had the honor of being part of the creation of a robot that is the first of its kind. People and news agencies around the world were thrilled to find out about Ai-Da who fuses art with technology and AI. In one week alone after Ai-Da’s debut, she was in nearly 900 publications/newspapers/magazines/websites.

She has also had television appearances on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan and The One Show alongside Killing Eve star Fiona Shaw. In addition to the exceptional press coverage, Ai-Da also exhibited and performed at The Barbican as well as at Ars Electronica (Austria).

Here are the links to some of her appearances: