The Revolution Of AI Art: Exclusive Interview With AI Curator Matthieu Grambert
Interview Alexander Koko
Rapidly growing and constantly evolving, the artificial intelligence has started creating quite bold impact on art, photography and fashion scene. While AI-generated art works and projects become more prevalent by providing a digitalized new-era image experience to the creator and the audience, they have also become increasingly controversial. Let’s skip the controversial part for now and let’s stay on the bright side of this digital revolution! Believe it or not but if you look at our special ‘Summer Edition’ cover shooting, you will be just amazed as we are, since it is totally created using AI tools by a talented AI Curator Matthieu Grambert. Matthieu is using different machine learning algorithms to create his digital artworks and projects for brands which are visually mind-blowing and creatively stunning. Some of his work has been featured on New York City’s first-ever AI Fashion Week and Milano Fashion Film festival. Matthieu calls himself as a ‘storyteller’ since his AI images are very realistic. Looking at them might even trigger some of your senses. When creating them, Matthieu values the character and a story-line more than anything. Interviewed by our creative director Alexander Koko, Matthieu Grambert explains his creative process, shares his thoughts on the future of photography and fashion, comments about the pros and cons surrounding AI-generated art and talks about his upcoming AI projects. Scroll down to read the full interview and have a closer look at our latest AI cover fashion editorial ‘Digital Oasis’ exclusively created for our Digital Only magazine by the artist…
When and how did you get interested in becoming an AI Curator?
The moment I discovered Midjourney in August last year I have become interested in it more and more… To be honest, it took me some time to figure out how it works and where exactly it would go. After experimenting with some images the final results really astonished me! As an imaginative and creative person, discovering the infinite possibilities of AI’s digital Art has changed my life and now it is all about before and after. The ability to build my creative ideas from scratch and constructing them without any required skills is quite impressive. I like grand concepts. I love to explore new ideas, to build stories, so it is truly a game changer for me.
What was your first AI artwork? Could you tell us the backstory of it?
It was just some fun stuff I did with Mario Bros, Drag-queens and Balenciaga robotic models. It wasn’t really serious because the quality wasn’t truly there at first, so I was mostly having fun and was just exploring on what could have been done more.
What is the most challenging part/s in curating an AI Art or Fashion project?
The most challenging part is trying to get as close as possible to my initial ideas and bringing more of my input on them. I don’t want to do random AI. I want to create meaningful concepts with humans. I want to accomplish the ideas I have in my mind while still getting closer in terms of style and aesthetics. This can take hours and hours… And sometimes I just fail to obtain what I really want to accomplish.
What do you think is the future of AI fashion?
First of all AI definitely will help designers and creators. Secondly and most possibly AI will take some space in the photography, imagery and video fields as well. And finally, which is kinda important, since the costs of AI are much lower than the conventional ones, brands will go to this direction and will be able to do the projects by themselves without the exterior involvement.
How do you see the global classic fashion photography scene in comparison to the upcoming AI fashion scene?
Funny enough, but I never truly cared about the photography on the first place. The photography is not my priority in my projects since I care more about stories and characters. While people were still doing 3D bodies and faces using AI, I was exploring on ultra realism because I need to believe in humans in my images, in order to build an aesthetics, a story line and a fashion set. So I wouldn’t be able to compare both since I don’t know that much about the fashion photography field, but from what I’ve seen many photographers have already started to play with AI as well.
What was your inspiration in creating the AI fashion editorial that is featured on our Summer Edition cover?
Of course the mesmerizing La Jardin Majorelle in Morocco. I wanted something a bit minimalistic and realistic. For the set I was inspired by Matisse and his amazing colorful world. At first, the models weren’t supposed to be naked. They were supposed to be weirder, as I usually do, but I couldn’t make it happen because it was really hard to combine at once all the elements I wanted. So when I saw one naked guy (which shouldn’t have happen on those tools with the censorship going on), I just told to myself: Ok, this is it!’ The story is still close to what I wanted to create on the first place so I have decided to keep it like this. I still have that bittersweet feeling of loneliness all over me, since I went to Morocco for holidays by myself…
Do you think that eventually fashion AI will totally replace classical fashion editorials in near future? Taking into consideration that AI is marching quite fast, do you personally think that the classic art will be totally replaced by Digital art very soon?
I do think photography is going to die out or go fully down the road professionally, but also I’m not sure how it will end up. But I think every art form is about to digitalize completely and even switch radically. We’re going through a big civilization change too with AI and many people aren’t aware of all that yet.
Since anything can be now created using AI, are you also interested in creating architectural AI projects or any other ones?
I’ve done some AI architectural images before and continue so. Nowadays I mostly play with backgrounds, otherwise I feel empty because they do not reflect my vision.
What is next on your AI Art bucket list? Any new project(s)?
I am working on a new huge video and trying to have some professional projects as well. At the end of the road, I know that I will lean more towards the video field and I am pretty sure it will be as soon as possible. I have already so much stories in mind to tell. I even thought about some mini series that I would like to create. Also, I want to animate some of my best AI shootings.
