mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Understanding and Creating Art with AI: Review and Outlook

arXiv 2102.09109 ↗First posted 18 Feb 2021cs.CV cs.AI cs.MMcited by 60

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Abstract (arXiv)

Technologies related to artificial intelligence (AI) have a strong impact on the changes of research and creative practices in visual arts. The growing number of research initiatives and creative applications that emerge in the intersection of AI and art, motivates us to examine and discuss the creative and explorative potentials of AI technologies in the context of art. This paper provides an integrated review of two facets of AI and art: 1) AI is used for art analysis and employed on digitized artwork collections; 2) AI is used for creative purposes and generating novel artworks. In the context of AI-related research for art understanding, we present a comprehensive overview of artwork datasets and recent works that address a variety of tasks such as classification, object detection, similarity retrieval, multimodal representations, computational aesthetics, etc. In relation to the role of AI in creating art, we address various practical and theoretical aspects of AI Art and consolidate related works that deal with those topics in detail. Finally, we provide a concise outlook on the future progression and potential impact of AI technologies on our understanding and creation of art.

Key facts. Cited by 60 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 34 of its 147 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2021.

Builds on

34 of 147 references.

References · 34

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2018A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 5,986
  3. 2018Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesiscited by 2,609
  4. 2013Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentationcited by 2,160
  5. 2016Generative Adversarial Text to Image Synthesiscited by 735
  6. 2017AttnGAN: Fine-Grained Text to Image Generation with Attentional Generative Adversarial Networkscited by 664
  7. 2017Neural Style Transfer: A Reviewcited by 199
  8. 2021ArtEmis: Affective Language for Visual Artcited by 103
  9. 2017CAN: Creative Adversarial Networks, Generating "Art" by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Normscited by 96
  10. 2018How to Read Paintings: Semantic Art Understanding with Multi-Modal Retrievalcited by 73
  11. 2013Recognizing Image Stylecited by 64
  12. 2020A Dataset and Baselines for Visual Question Answering on Artcited by 38
22 more
  1. 2018The Shape of Art History in the Eyes of the Machinecited by 33
  2. 2018Weakly Supervised Object Detection in Artworkscited by 27
  3. 2019Discovering Visual Patterns in Art Collections with Spatially-consistent Feature Learningcited by 26
  4. 2020Biases in Generative Art -- A Causal Look from the Lens of Art Historycited by 26
  5. 2016Detecting People in Artwork with CNNscited by 25
  6. 2016Learning scale-variant and scale-invariant features for deep image classificationcited by 20
  7. 2018Can Computers Create Art?cited by 18
  8. 2019Autonomy, Authenticity, Authorship and Intention in computer generated artcited by 18
  9. 2020A Data Set and a Convolutional Model for Iconography Classification in Paintingscited by 17
  10. 2021Iconographic Image Captioning for Artworkscited by 15
  11. 2020An analysis of the transfer learning of convolutional neural networks for artistic imagescited by 11
  12. 2019Linking Art through Human Posescited by 9
  13. 2020Understanding Compositional Structures in Art Historical Images using Pose and Gaze Priorscited by 9
  14. 2018Multitask Painting Categorization by Deep Multibranch Neural Networkcited by 8
  15. 2020Visual Question Answering for Cultural Heritagecited by 8
  16. 2020Visual link retrieval and knowledge discovery in painting datasetscited by 7
  17. 2020Recognizing Characters in Art History Using Deep Learningcited by 6
  18. 2017DeepPainter: Painter Classification Using Deep Convolutional Autoencoderscited by 5
  19. 2016Pandora: Description of a Painting Database for Art Movement Recognition with Baselines and Perspectivescited by 4
  20. 2019Crypto art: A decentralized viewcited by 3
  21. 2020Insights From A Large-Scale Database of Material Depictions In Paintingscited by 2
  22. 2019A Game of Dice: Machine Learning and the Question Concerning Artcited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 5; 2022: 6; 2023: 17; 2024: 14; 2025: 12; 2026: 6.

60 papers.

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  1. 2023Holistic Evaluation of Text-To-Image Modelscited by 160
  2. 2023Art and the science of generative AI: A deeper divecited by 93
  3. 2023A Survey of AI Text-to-Image and AI Text-to-Video Generatorscited by 17
  4. 2024Diffusion-Based Visual Art Creation: A Survey and New Perspectivescited by 17
  5. 2023TP2O: Creative Text Pair-to-Object Generation using Balance Swap-Samplingcited by 16
  6. 2023Challenges and Remedies to Privacy and Security in AIGC: Exploring the Potential of Privacy Computing, Blockchain, and Beyondcited by 14
  7. 2024InstructG2I: Synthesizing Images from Multimodal Attributed Graphscited by 14
  8. 2024PartCraft: Crafting Creative Objects by Partscited by 13
  9. 2021When Creators Meet the Metaverse: A Survey on Computational Artscited by 12
  10. 2023Benchmarking Deepart Detectioncited by 12
  11. 2023ArtWhisperer: A Dataset for Characterizing Human-AI Interactions in Artistic Creationscited by 10
  12. 2021Graph Neural Networks for Knowledge Enhanced Visual Representation of Paintingscited by 9
38 more
  1. 2024Exploring the Use of Abusive Generative AI Models on Civitaicited by 9
  2. 2025ArtMentor: AI-Assisted Evaluation of Artworks to Explore Multimodal Large Language Models Capabilitiescited by 9
  3. 2024FairQueue: Rethinking Prompt Learning for Fair Text-to-Image Generationcited by 7
  4. 2022Is GPT-3 all you need for Visual Question Answering in Cultural Heritage?cited by 6
  5. 2023SniffyArt: The Dataset of Smelling Personscited by 6
  6. 2023Is Writing Prompts Really Making Art?cited by 5
  7. 2023From paintbrush to pixel: A review of deep neural networks in AI-generated artcited by 5
  8. 2023Beyond Reality: The Pivotal Role of Generative AI in the Metaversecited by 5
  9. 2023DreamCreature: Crafting Photorealistic Virtual Creatures from Imaginationcited by 5
  10. 2023Human-Inspired Facial Sketch Synthesis with Dynamic Adaptationcited by 4
  11. 2024Algorithmic Ways of Seeing: Using Object Detection to Facilitate Art Explorationcited by 4
  12. 2025Exploring Language Patterns of Prompts in Text-to-Image Generation and Their Impact on Visual Diversitycited by 3
  13. 2022Design of Unmanned Air Vehicles Using Transformer Surrogate Modelscited by 2
  14. 2023Transforming Pixels into a Masterpiece: AI-Powered Art Restoration using a Novel Distributed Denoising CNN (DDCNN)cited by 2
  15. 2025Context-aware Multimodal AI Reveals Hidden Pathways in Five Centuries of Art Evolutioncited by 2
  16. 2025Smelly, dense, and spreaded: The Object Detection for Olfactory References (ODOR) datasetcited by 2
  17. 2025From Sound to Sight: Towards AI-authored Music Videoscited by 2
  18. 2025Benchmarking Vision-Language and Multimodal Large Language Models in Zero-shot and Few-shot Scenarios: A study on Christian Iconographycited by 2
  19. 2023AI Art Curation: Re-imagining the city of Helsinki in occasion of its Biennialcited by 1
  20. 2024Visions of Destruction: Exploring a Potential of Generative AI in Interactive Artcited by 1
  21. 2024Artificial Intelligence for Geometry-Based Feature Extraction, Analysis and Synthesis in Artistic Images: A Surveycited by 1
  22. 2025Unlimited Editions: Documenting Human Style in AI Art Generationcited by 1
  23. 2026HanMoVLM: Large Vision-Language Models for Professional Artistic Painting Evaluationcited by 1
  24. 2026AttentionBender: Manipulating Cross-Attention in Video Diffusion Transformers as a Creative Probecited by 1
  25. 2021SINGA-Easy: An Easy-to-Use Framework for MultiModal Analysiscited by 0
  26. 2021VisualTextRank: Unsupervised Graph-based Content Extraction for Automating Ad Text to Image Searchcited by 0
  27. 2021Text is NOT Enough: Integrating Visual Impressions into Open-domain Dialogue Generationcited by 0
  28. 2022Discovering Personalized Semantics for Soft Attributes in Recommender Systems using Concept Activation Vectorscited by 0
  29. 2022Reinforced MOOCs Concept Recommendation in Heterogeneous Information Networkscited by 0
  30. 2022Explanation-Guided Fairness Testing through Genetic Algorithmcited by 0
  31. 2022Using Graph Neural Networks for Program Terminationcited by 0
  32. 2023Tribe or Not? Critical Inspection of Group Differences Using TribalGramcited by 0
  33. 2023AI and the creative realm: A short review of current and future applicationscited by 0
  34. 2024The Mechanical Turkness: Tactical Media Art and the Critique of Corporate AIcited by 0
  35. 2024Collaborative Interactive Evolution of Art in the Latent Space of Deep Generative Modelscited by 0
  36. 2024Set2Seq Transformer: Temporal and Position-Aware Set Representations for Sequential Multiple-Instance Learningcited by 0
  37. 2024Joint Model Assignment and Resource Allocation for Cost-Effective Mobile Generative Servicescited by 0
  38. 2024Exploiting Watermark-Based Defense Mechanisms in Text-to-Image Diffusion Models for Unauthorized Data Usagecited by 0

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