RIYADH — "Museum of GANs," a team with an artist Asma AlAmri, and AI experts Sultan Whebi and Saud AlMajed, has emerged as the winner of the AI Artathon, a first-of-its-kind international event designed to highlight the creative potential for humans and machines to work together to create art.

The winning piece aimed to create new artworks based on different emotional states as depicted in portraits. The artwork collected and classified many well-known portraits according to their emotional states and impressions, which the machine then contributed to creating the artwork.

"The Chimera Ant Queen" team came in second. Artists Afaaf Bawazir and Ali AlMosu, and AI expert Maha Alarifi, were inspired by "Chimera Ant Queen," a popular animation character. The project used digital graffiti, other artworks, and concepts to create a new and unique piece that follows the journey of "Chimera Ant".

"‘Emergent Typographies" team came in third. Artist Firas Safieddine and AI expert Yasser Sinjab reflected the beauty of Saudi Arabia’s nature using geographic and topographic graphics. The team used existing lines and shapes to create a new digital artwork in which new patterns and inspirations are made by the AI.

The three winning teams shared a $146,644 prize.

The winners of the competition were announced on the second and final day of the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, which is being held under the patronage of Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, deputy premier and minister of defense, under the title "Artificial Intelligence for the Good of Humanity".

The winning teams, as selected by expert judges, mixed creativity with technical expertise and utilized a range of advanced AI applications, to create the artworks which showcase the creative potential of humans working together with machines.

The AI Artathon was organized by the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), as part of the Global AI Summit. The summit is an international event that connects key decision-makers from government, academia, business, and technology to discuss global issues and challenges around AI and how artificial intelligence can shape the new normal.

Abdullah Bin Sharaf Al-Ghamdi, president of SDAIA, and chairman of the organizing committee of the Global AI Summit, congratulated the winners on their efforts.

“The winning artworks highlight the potential for artificial intelligence to empower human beings in many different ways and showed how artists and AI experts can utilize these emerging technologies to unlock new areas of creativity. SDAIA would like to thank all of our teams for their dedication and work in making the AI Artathon a success,” said Al-Ghamdi.

The competition began in January when over 2,000 people from over 50 countries applied to join a hackathon weekend held in Riyadh. 300 people, including artists, graphic designers, AI experts, and programmers competed in the hackathon. Then, 20 teams were selected to participate in the bootcamp phase, where they learned and enhanced skills for using machine learning algorithms and generative adversarial networks (GAN) to create artworks.