An art showcase in New York features AI art from the 1970s

The art might not seem that magnificent at first. A man stands in front of a red background, next to a potted plant. His hands are mismatched and there’s white space missing color.

But the piece helps tell the story of artificial intelligence-generated art, and that’s why the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has put it on display.

The history of AARON

In the 1960s, a man named Harold Cohen taught art at the University of California. He was known for his abstract oil-based art, but he wanted to take on something more challenging, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Around the same time, there was rapid advancement in computer technology. According to PBS, the first mass-produced computer operating system came out in 1964 from IBM, and in 1965, the minicomputer was released.

Amid these developments, Cohen decided to create a program nicknamed AARON. He taught it the fundamentals of art, physics and basic objects, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Eventually, AARON learned to complete tasks and impersonate human-like decision making, which is different from current AI programs that only rely on image databases, per Smithsonian Magazine.

The Whitney Museum describes AARON as the “earliest artificial intelligence (AI) program for artmaking.” The museum says AARON has the ability to accomplish certain artistic tasks, such as distributing items based on size with varying amounts of detail to create dimension.

AARON is also able to physically draw illustrations thanks to recreations of Cohen’s early AARON drawing machines at the Whitney Museum.

Multiple works by Cohen will be on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art until June 2024.

Cohen was born in 1928 and had several art exhibitions at many museums during his lifetime until his death in 2016, per the Whitney Museum.