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# A Portrait-Painting Robot with Its Own Artistic Style
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/a-portrait-painting-robot-with-its-own-artistic-style/
- Published: 2015-12-11T16:56:31.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:42:47.000Z
- Description: In the coming robot world takeover, the art world won’t be spared.
- Author: Carey Dunne
- Tags: In Brief, Artificial Intelligence, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:13 (2014, 2015, part 3)

![washlarge](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/12/washlarge.png)

bitPaintr’s portrait of George Washinton (image via Pindar Van Arman/bitPaintr.com)

In the coming [robot world takeover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI%5Ftakeover?ref=hyperallergic.com), the art world won’t be spared. There are already plenty of signs of intelligent machines encroaching on the roles of human artists. Take [Google Deep Dream’](https://hyperallergic.com/googles-new-visualization-tool-slips-slimy-and-furry-creatures-into-art-history/)s hallucinatory fractal art; or the meticulous painting bot [e-David](http://hyperallergic.com/76472/teaching-a-robot-to-paint/), which adapts its style mid-process; or [Paul-IX](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/12/drawing-robot%5Fn%5F6141372.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), an automated sketch-bot that creates impeccable still lifes.

The latest addition to this growing family of artistic androids is [bitPaintr](http://bitpaintr.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), a portrait-painting robot created by artist and software developer Pindar Van Arman. Recently successfully funded on [Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/396659733/bitpaintr-a-portrait-painting-robot-by-pindar-van?ref=hyperallergic.com), bitPaintr uses a brush and paint to make portraits on canvas based on photographs that users upload. It’s done with a mix of its own artificial intelligence, Van Arman’s artistic input, and the user’s input. Not that it needs all this help, necessarily — Van Arman claims his robot is developing its own artistic style.

In two demo videos, bitPaintr paints impressively accurate pictures of Gandhi and Einstein. The robot has also [captured](http://bitpaintr.com/portraits/?ref=hyperallergic.com) the likenesses of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin on the dollar bill, Martin Luther King Jr., and others.

BitPaintr’s style might best be described as robotic expressionism (no offense to expressionists): precise crosshatching mixed with loose, splotchy brushwork in colors that all look diluted with beige. The processresembles an algorithmic attempt at spontaneity, like irregular human handwriting turned into a standardized digital font. There’s something strangely pixelated about these images, despite all the splotches.

But maybe that’s just [fear of sentient robots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatonophobia?ref=hyperallergic.com) talking. Because whether or not you like them, you probably wouldn’t guess at first glance that these portraits were made by a robot. They’re not paint-by-numbers formulaic; one portrait of Abraham Lincoln looks like a first-year art student’s uninspired Basquiat ripoff, with a tic-tac-toe game scrawled on Lincoln’s face, surrounded by graffiti-esque letters. We’re not nominating bitPaintr for any art prize, but there are definitely [humans who paint with less soul than this robot.](https://hyperallergic.com/jeff-koons-shiny-on-the-outside-hollow-on-the-inside-part-2/)

![image4](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/12/image4.jpg)

bitPaintr’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln (image via Pindar Van Arman/bitPaintr.com)

bitPaintr and other robotic artists all raise questions that, until recently, have mostly been theoretical, the stuff of science fiction — about the definition of creativity, whether it’s a trait exclusive to humans or whether machines, too, can have original ideas. But we’ll wait for these robots’ results on the [Lovelace Test](http://www.slate.com/articles/health%5Fand%5Fscience/new%5Fscientist/2014/12/lovelace%5Ftest%5Fof%5Fartificial%5Fintelligence%5Fcreativity%5Fbetter%5Fthan%5Fthe%5Fturing.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) — a 2001 test of a machine’s ability to exhibit creative intelligence — before fully freaking out about the wrath of cyborg artists. 

*h/t* [*NPR*](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/12/06/458347976/you-can-give-a-robot-a-paintbrush-but-does-it-create-art?utm%5Fmedium=RSS&utm%5Fcampaign=artslife&ref=hyperallergic.com)