The Project
The Creative AI Demonstrator Project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), explores the potential for using AI, and specifically Creative AI, in the creative industries in Scotland. In addition to looking at Creative AI more broadly, we also supported a funding call for rapid turnaround Creative AI Music & Audio Pilot Projects.
The Creative AI Demonstrator project expands on some of the fantastic work we’ve seen over the first five years of the Creative Informatics programme – both projects we’ve directly engaged with, and others emerging from the wider creative community across Scotland.
The Creative AI Demonstrator Project was created from this work, with the support of new ideas and innovations from Scotland’s creative industries working with AI.
How it developed
This project developed and went live in 2023, following the rapid development of Creative AI, and rests upon the use of data and data driven innovation in the creative industries. Back in 2021 we wrote about the potential for Creative AI for the CRAIC blog and since then have seen a huge increase in interest and projects using AI across Creative Informatics and the wider creative industries. We have developed a particular focus on the ethical use of AI and have been excited to see how Scotland’s AI Strategy is encouraging responsible and ethical use of these technologies.
Additionally, Creative AI has recently become much more visible – and coming into widespread public use – due to the availability of Large Language Models (particularly ChatGPT), and generative AI tools such as the text to image platforms DALL:E 2 and MidJourney. These tools raise real challenges for the creative industries around creativity, originality, intellectual property, and ethics. However, AI – including generative AI – also has huge potential as a tool for creative work, as part of an ideation process, and as a way to experiment, particularly when these tools are in the hands of creative professionals and used in an ethical and appropriate way.
Some great local examples of this have recently been developed, including exploratory projects like Martin Disley’s Resident Entrepreneur with the National Library of Scotland, the fantastic artworks emerging from The New Real, as well as innovative start-ups emerging from our cluster, such as DataMind Audio’s ground-breaking music production work (as recently showcased on Mr Bill’s Podcast #120), through to the lively improv AI session run by Abandoman (aka Rob Broderick).
There is far more potential for AI and machine learning (ML) in creative work, whether that’s using AI behind the scenes to support more strategic use of data, to enable work to be made in new or more efficient ways, to work with much larger datasets than have been possible before, or to help discovery, search, and use. We particularly wanted to explore Creative AI in music and sound, an area we see creatives in Scotland having particularly strong expertise and start-up ideas in – whether coming from music production, filmmaking, gaming, work with voices and speech, work with audio archives, and wider perspectives.
Between May to July 2023, we hosted a survey, scoping workshops, and a developed a new funding call to help us understand the potential for Creative AI in Scotland, with a particular focus on understanding what kinds of support, training, advice, or funding might enable innovation in this space. We will publish a report at the end of the project and will also use our research to inform future discussion with funders around the needs of the creative sector in Scotland.
Creative AI Music & Audio Pilot Projects
This call, open to all creatives in Scotland, supported small-scale, rapid R&D projects to explore Creative AI in the context of music and audio. Up to 10 proposals were supported with up to £5k through this call, which aimed to create new Minimum Viable Products (MVPs). An MVP is an early, basic version of a product that demonstrates minimum necessary requirements and enables you to validate a product idea.
In late 2023, we hosted an event showcasing all of the projects we have supported, along with a report including reflections on the project and recommendations for creatives, industry and funders.
