The “Me, Myself & AI” project provides our Media arts students a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence. By comparing their interpretations of source prompts, such as song lyrics, poetry, lines from stories, or quotes, with the AI-generated art produced by Midjourney (using the same prompts), students can gain insights into the creative process and how different humans and machines are when it comes to producing creative artifacts.
Through brainstorming and using abstract concepts, students are challenged to think deeply about the source material and express their ideas uniquely and innovatively. While working on their digital art, without being informed, the same prompts that inspired each piece were fed as data points to Midjourney to generate the AI image below each student’s work.
While it may be tempting to compare and judge the quality of the outputs in this project, the main focus of the student’s work is on their ability to think creatively and independently beyond the capabilities of the machine they are using.
The Ethical Use of AI
Last month, Fred Galang, a Media Arts educator, was contacted by Heidi Siwak, a retired teacher and current coach for the I-Think Division at the Rotman School of Management. During a video stream, Mr. Galang discussed the ethical use of AI in digital graphics creation and compositing. He drew from his experience with a Grade 12 Media Arts project titled “Me, Myself & AI.” The live stream reached an audience of 1400 students and was also broadcast to four school boards.