Artist’s intent: AI recognizes emotions in visual art

A team of AI researchers has trained its algorithms to see the emotional intent behind great works of art, possibly leading to computers that see much deeper than current technologies. Researchers have built an algorithm that can capture the emotions that an image evokes. Experts in artificial intelligence have gotten quite good at creating computers that can "see" the world around them - recognizing objects, animals, and activities within their purview. These have become the foundational technologies for autonomous cars, planes, and security systems of the future. But now a team of researchers is working to teach computers to recognize not just what objects are in an image, but how those images make people feel - i.e., algorithms with emotional intelligence. "This ability will be key to making artificial intelligence not just more intelligent, but more human , so to speak," says Panos Achlioptas , a doctoral candidate in computer science at Stanford University who worked with collaborators in France and Saudi Arabia. To get to this goal, Achlioptas and his team collected a new dataset, called ArtEmis , which was recently published in an arXiv pre-print.