These BMW art cars were designed by robots

As you’ll well know, BMW loves its art cars. And to put it mildly, we’re rather fond of them too. Click these blue words for a little retrospective to see what we’re on about.

Only thing is, BMW’s art cars are usually designed and painted by, well… artists. This latest collection may look similar to all those that came before, but these 8 Series Gran Coupes were actually designed using super brainy artificial intelligence software. Wild.

Apparently, creative technologist Nathan Shipley of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, and Gary Yeh, art collector and founder of ArtDrunk, collaborated with BMW on the project, using something called an ‘open source StyleGAN artificial intelligence software’ (us neither) that cross-references over 50,000 images of artwork from the past 900 years. The software can then “understand art” and subsequently generates the seven entirely new pieces you see on these rendered 8 Series’.

Isn’t that just one of the most futuristic sentences you’ve ever read? The end is clearly nigh.

Anyway, let’s not get too existential about it – no doubt the computer would be able to turn that into a stunning piece of art. Hmph.

BMW is calling the project “The Ultimate AI Masterpiece” and there’ll be a virtual installation that’ll premiere in conjunction with the art fair Frieze New York 2021. So, what do we think of the computer-generated efforts, folks?