Art is the expression of human creativity. Art has always been central to self-expression in Africa. Works of art contribute an ever-greater share to economic development and high-value growth as African artists attain greater recognition globally. The AI trend is what matters and this depends on how early or long African Artists be at its cutting edge. It will be too late if African Artists wait for it to be relevant to them. We think AI comes with new opportunities that African artists have not explored yet.
Techniques such as DeepDream and style transfer have enabled artists to interpret their subject matter with a new aesthetic. Artists from Africa and the diaspora make use of natural language processing tools to share multigenerational stories, reimagine traditional literature and explore representations of Blackness.In addition to using the technology for artwork creation, artificial intelligence serves as a subject matter for artists, who investigate relationships between local cultures and AI as well as visualising possible AI entities.
Artists from Africa and Black communities globally treat AI as an aesthetic, tool, entity and technology, highlighting its faults and limitations, reimagining African cultural heritage and sharing futurist visions as well as deeply personal narratives. Alongside this artistic activity, the continued investment in the continent, community-led educational projects as well as the democratisation of the art market through NFTs mean that the future for artists working with machine learning, natural language processing and computer vision presents plenty of opportunities to make their mark in global AI art.
Here at ArtExpress we believe that AI will continue being with us as an art platform or art community and that is why we are researching and fine-tuning our own AI models to create datasets that are deeply involved in the creation, consumption and in showcasing  African Art and African Artworks.
