The Painting Fool

Chatbot listing, virtual agents, virtual assistants, chat bot directory, conversational agents, virtual human news, chatterbot list

Machine intelligence competition 2007 #1

Presentation

Simon Colton, Maja Pantic and Michel Valstar, Imperial College, London (sgc@doc.ic.ac.uk)

The Painting Fool is an automated painter which aims to be a creative artist in its own right. In the demonstration, we will ask for a volunteer to sit in front of a video camera, and to express an emotion, for instance by smiling or frowning. Machine Vision software will tell The Painting Fool both where the features of the sitter’s face are, and their emotional state. The Painting Fool will then paint a unique portrait of the sitter, using its appreciation both of the emotion being expressed and its own abilities. It will choose a suitable colour palette, art materials, abstraction level and painting style - which may involve exaggerating features - to heighten the emotion in the portrait that it produces.

chatbot, chat bot, virtual agent The Painting Fool

Hello. I’m the painting fool. I’m a computer program that aspires to be an artist. I’ve been taught to sketch, draw and paint by my teacher, Dr. Simon Colton, since 2001. I differ from other graphics software by trying to simulate the painting process rather than just the results of the painting process. Painting is a highly cognitive activity which requires skill, appreciation and imagination. Programs such as Photoshop have some skill in being able to rapidly turn a digital photo into an image which looks like it might have been painted in, say, an impressionistic style. But the software is merely a tool to enable humans to be more creative. This is very useful, but Photoshop is not creative, because it is neither appreciative nor imaginative, so it will never be thought of as an artist in its own right. Having said all that, I’m not sure I’m creative myself yet. I’ve been engaging in a few projects which enable me to express skill, appreciation and imagination, as described below.

Currently, I mainly work from digital images to produce artworks. My skill lies in being able to look at an image as a collection of paint regions, determine which colours would work for painting the regions, then simulating the usage of all sorts of art materials to produce the picture on a simulated canvas.

Live since: 2007

More information in directory

A few arbitrary other nominees and winners

Privacy statement

Summary:

We will NEVER spam you, nor publish or sell your details to any third party. We hate spam, just as much as you do.

What data does chatbots.org store?

We’ll store all the details you enter on chatbots.org in our database and we maintain statistics of your visits with the sole reason to give you the best personalized service possible.

How does chatbots.org store my data?

We make use of Expression Engine, one of the largest weblog publication systems in the world. US President Barack Obama has used it for WhiteHouse.gov. Our system makes use of a MySQL database.

How do I access my data?

If you are a chatbots.org member, you can access your personal data through your account panel after you login. Additionally, your statistics (number of visits, numbers of reactions, duration of your visits etcetera) will be accessible to you in the future. If you are a guest, please contact Erwin van Lun, founder and managing director of chatbots.org,with your question.

What data is shown?

Chatbots.org allows members to build their profile on a dedicated profile page and show it to the outside world to help them to build their reputation as a chatbot expert. Chatbots.org also allows members to turn off this option if they prefer. However, when members have written a post or a reaction, the name they’ve entered in their profile will always be shown, including a link to their profile. If people click this link, a blocked page may be shown (dependent on your preference). We will create an ‘alias’ option in the future for those members who do not want to use their real names, but we strongly believe that professionals should reveal their identity.

If you aren’t a member, your e-mail address will be necessary when you leave a comment on the site, for follow-up comments, any questions we might have about your comment (which isn’t very likely) or for direct reactions.

When will you use my contact details?

As a member or a guest, we probably know your e-mail address and in some situations also your telephone number or residential address details. We will NEVER spam you, nor publish or nor sell your details to any third party. We hate spam, just as much as you do.

We will use your e-mail address to notify you about new comments in a post you commented on earlier (you are able to turn this option off for eacharticle), for account settings confirmations (if you’ve changed your password, for example) or for occasional notifications on major changes in the site (typically 1-5 per year). Obviously, we’ll use your e-mail address to send you the e-mail newsletters you’ve subscribed to. We may also approach you if you’ve left some brilliant comments on the site: we might want to work with you! We will not send you product or service offerings!

We will use your telephone details after we’ve tried to contact you via e-mail and this e-mail bounced, resulted in other error messages or you simply didn’t answer for some kind of reason. If we have the impression your e-mail address doesn’t work (anymore) we might contact you via phone.

We will use your residential address details when we need to ship something to you that we can’t send by email. Additionally we’ll mention your address on invoices.

Who can modify my data?

We have a very small team (typically max five persons) that has access to your personal data. Please contact Erwin van Lun, founder and managing director of chatbots.org, for the most recent list of the individuals who can access your data. If you have subscribed to one of our newsletters, details like name and e-mail address will be made available to our e-mail service provider for single usage.

Is my data secure?

We´ll do all that we reasonably can to protect your data. Reasonable as we are not a large financial international institution or a military organization. You can expect us to follow all Expression Engine security guidelines, make backups and we don´t provide passwords to other individuals.

I received comment spam!

Unfortunately third parties try to destroy the web by putting comment spam (comments placed by robots, with links to dubious websites) onto websites and thus also on chatbots.org. We’ll do everything we can to avoid comment spam whilst also avoiding barriers for people to react (making reactions too secure or too complex will kill the dynamics of the site). It´s all about balance. Comment spammers don’t have access to your e-mail address. You can always unsubscribe to notifications on specific postings.

Any other questions

Please contact Erwin van Lun, founder and managing director of Chatbots.org, if you have any additional questions.

Awards News
RSS Feed

Follow
Chatbots

Your name:		*
Your e-mail:	We will never send unsolicited emails or share your address with third parties. See our privacy policy.	*
Your comment (you can use Emoticons):
Remember my personal data Notify me via e-mail when new comments are posted here

If you sign-up now and join the fastest growing chatbot community in the world, you'll never have to type those annoying anti-spam characters again. And membership is free, obviously. OK, I join (or login)

Machine intelligence competition 2007 #1