Italian Team Wins IK Prize 2016 for AI Art Project Recognition

A team of artists and researchers from Fabrica, Benetton Group's communication research center in Villorba, Italy, has won the 2016 IK Prize with their project Recognition. The prize, awarded by the Tate in London since 2013, recognizes digital creativity. This year's theme focused on artificial intelligence to enhance the museum's image archive. Recognition uses computer vision and AI to analyze thousands of images, comparing composition, style, and subject to find connections between the Tate's art collection and news photography archives. Inspired by Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas, the project will be presented at the Tate and online by the end of summer 2016. The team—Angelo Semeraro, Coralie Gourguechon, and Monica Lanaro—received £15,000 and a £90,000 production budget sponsored by Microsoft. Visitors can watch the algorithm generate a real-time virtual collection. The creators stated: 'We are interested in how digital technology changes our perception of time and the world. Teaching AI to compare the Tate collection with contemporary photojournalism is a unique opportunity to explore how we see the world.'