XAI: Using Smart Photobooth for Explaining History of Art

The rise of Artificial Intelligence has led to advancements in daily life, including applications in industries, telemedicine, farming, and smart cities. It is necessary to have human-AI synergies to guarantee user engagement and provide interactive expert knowledge, despite AI’s success in "less technical" fields. In this article, the possible synergies between humans and AI to explain the development of art history and artistic style transfer are discussed. This study is part of the "Smart Photobooth" project that is able to automatically transform a user’s picture into a well-known artistic style as an interactive approach to introduce the fundamentals of the history of art to the common people and provide them with a concise explanation of the various art painting styles. This study investigates human-AI synergies by combining the explanation produced by an explainable AI mechanism with a human expert’s insights to provide reasons for school students and a larger audience

The Ostarbeiters in Belval

Egberdien van der Peijl presented some artworks based on the ZWANG-proeject photograph sollection of the Ostarbeiters, made on the forced labourer camp sites and or in the steel mills together with DJ Yoni. The musical improvisation together with a theatrically played performance imitated the life of an Ostarbeiter in the gallery's basements. The venue was Fellner Contemporary in the city

Toward XAI & Human Synergies to Explain the History of Art: The Smart Photobooth Project

peer reviewedThe advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought about significant changes in our daily lives with applications including industry, smart cities, agriculture, and telemedicine. Despite the successes of AI in other "less-technical" domains, human-AI synergies are required to ensure user engagement and provide interactive expert knowledge. This is notably the case of applications related to art since the appreciation and the comprehension of art is considered to be an exclusively human capacity. This paper discusses the potential human-AI synergies aiming at explaining the history of art and artistic style transfer. This work is done in the context of the "Smart Photobooth" a project which runs within the AI & Art pavilion. The latter is a satellite event of Esch2022 European Capital of Culture whose main aim is to reflect on AI and the future of art. The project is mainly an outreach and knowledge dissemination project, it uses a smart photo-booth, capable of automatically transforming the user's picture into a well-known artistic style (e.g., impressionism), as an interactive approach to introduce the principles of the history of art to the open public and provide them with a simple explanation of different art painting styles. Whereas some of the cuttingedge AI algorithms can provide insights on what constitutes an artistic style on the visual level, the information provided by human experts is essential to explain the historical and political context in which the style emerged. To bridge this gap, this paper explores Human-AI synergies in which the explanation generated by the eXplainable AI (XAI) mechanism is coupled with insights from the human expert to provide explanations for school students as well as a wider audience. Open issues and challenges are also identified and discussed