What are the latest AI-powered tools transforming the market for art and cultural goods? In this Let’s Talk episode of the Tech in the Arts podcast, AMT Lab’s Executive Director, Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford, and Lead Researcher, Ian Hawthorne, explore cutting-edge platforms like NALA, Blendbox, Spines, and Encore—and how these innovations are reshaping the way we create and consume art.
Show Notes:
Transcript:
Ian Hawthorne
Welcome to this episode of Tech in the Arts, the podcast series for the Arts Management and Technology Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. Our goal is to connect you with innovation happening in the field. And in this episode, we have a lot of exciting things to talk about. My name is Ian Hawthorne. I'm the lead researcher here at AMT Lab and I'm joined today by Dr. Brett Crawford, who's our director. Today, we're planning to talk a little bit about AI and its impact on markets for arts and cultural goods. We're also planning to talk about the implications for artists and the broader economy as an effect of some of these marketplaces.
So, happy to dive into it.
Dr. Brett Crawford
I'm really excited to be here for the conversation. It's been a while since I've been able to take part of a Let's Talk, so this is wonderful.
Ian Hawthorne
Welcome back.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Thanks. Before we start, I was wondering if you had seen the article about the Federal Trade Commission.
Ian Hawthorne
I had not until you had shared it with me, but I'd love to hear a little more about it.
Dr. Brett Crawford
So, I'm excited about it because it shows that they're starting to actually take action against surveillance.
So the FTC is specifically taking action against one data broker, which is Mobile Wallet. And they're really focusing on, saying that they are not allowed to collect and sell data around military installations. I would like them to not be selling my data. But also churches, healthcare facilities, and other sensitive locations.
So basically saying you can't sell our data about things that we don't want other people to know about.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, that's a huge step, especially for America like in the broader scheme of the world, regulating these data brokers and, and just general data privacy.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And I'm just signed up for identity protection because I was definitely exposed in the last year's social security breach. So yeah, so the more data protection we can start putting into the ecosystem, the happier I will be.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. Hey, I'm all for it.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Exactly. So, I know that you have been really engaged in the last month looking around AI and how it's affecting the marketplace. And we are in the time of buying things called the holiday season.
So one of the pieces that you wrote about, I'm really curious about, is NALA. They called it “Spotify for art.” And, I'm curious if you can tell us more about that?
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of the more exciting pieces in the newsletter. To expand a little more, NALA stands for Network Artistic Learning Algorithm. And it's basically a marketplace that connects artists with sellers, much like you'd think of with like an Etsy or Artsy, if you know any of those platforms.
But its main pitch is that it runs on a lot of heavy data science to algorithmically match people, which is where it gets that “Spotify for Art" title.
For a little background, it was made by some data scientists from MIT and London. And they really heavily push this idea that it curates your art, what art you want to find, based on your behaviors, based on who you routinely want to search for.
And it's open to sign-up for actual practicing artists, in contrast to Artsy, which is more of an extension of institutions. So Artsy tends to contract with galleries and gives you access to auctions to follow artists in. NALA's a lot more peer to peer. It's a lot more about I want to find an independent artist, and an independent artist wants to list their work on the platform.
But then to manage the volume of that, they use all these algorithms, and now they've introduced AI to let you visually search too. So basically it's like if I like Monet, but I can't paint like Monet, and I haven't found an artist who paints like Monet, I can upload my favorite Monet, and then it'll use that to visually search their platform to find any of the artists they have that visually match that type of clue. And so, they're really trying to lean into that algorithmic and that AI to just better stimulate this market between buyers and sellers.
Dr. Brett Crawford
I find that interesting. I've been reading some other articles that have articulated a waning of the gallerist and visual art marketplace, meaning people are buying less, particularly younger market purchasers.
And I'm wondering if this will target that population better to get them engaged in purchasing art for their lives in their homes.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. No, I think so. I would probably put money on it. Even just thinking about this, in the history of art, there's always been artists who are raging against certain institutions, when you go back to the Dutch in the Golden Age, or even the Impressionists, like I mentioned, they didn't like the academies. And so, I see this as kind of an extension of that deinstitutionalizing.
I think a lot of artists want to work outside of the gallery scene. If you're not in New York or London, it's a little harder to get onto a platform like Artsy, and so, really anything that makes it just more democratized, I would hope. It helps with it. I think then you have to critically think about the algorithm governing it .
Dr. Brett Crawford
Both the algorithm governing it and I think there's been a lot of criticism on Spotify because Spotify doesn't actually compensate its artists very well. So how they're actually monetizing and compensating artists, what that relationship is, will also be interesting to see how that develops over time.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. And I think it, I think it's promising because it's more of a broker. In the sense that you're still buying the art directly from the artist. And I don't understand fully what the commission fee is, but I would hope, I would hope that it's somewhat favorable for the artists
Dr. Brett Crawford
Yeah.
Ian Hawthorne
And I'm sure they hope so too.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And it's a great way to use what I would call a fairly straightforward AI tool, which is matching an image to an image.
Ian Hawthorne
It's very straightforward, very simple, but effective.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Yeah, when you first started talking about it, I was thinking it was more of an aggregator. So I was able to find something anywhere. I wasn't realizing as well that the artists have to buy into the platform so to speak. they have to enter to the platform.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, definitely. Have you used any other platforms to buy art on? Because I know there's a few nowadays.
Dr. Brett Crawford
I was going to say there are a few. I have family members who are working on Etsy. So I try to support them. And I would probably say the individual artists that I own their work, I tend to know them. That's one of our jokes in our household is “I know the person who made that thing.” So it tends to be artists that I know. So I'm less going out on the internet to buy things.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. I feel like Etsy is underestimated in its place as like a visual, a fine art market. I think a lot of people know it's for crafts, but so many practicing artists are on Etsy that I don't think it should be ever left out of a conversation like NALA or Artsy.
Dr. Brett Crawford
It's one more outlet, and you have to make a living, so why not? I, I recognize around a brand that an artist may not want their brand in a particular marketplace, but that doesn't mean they can't even roll off a second brand that is putting their art into that marketplace.
Ian Hawthorne
More artisanal.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Exactly.
Ian Hawthorne
I remember when I started making art, I had a little Etsy account that has nothing on it anymore, thank God.
Dr. Brett Crawford
You sold it all. Congratulations!
Ian Hawthorne
I had one or two people interested over the course of the two years it was up, so…
Dr. Brett Crawford
Very cool.
Ian Hawthorne
That was that was before I learned arts management at all.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Now you can really maximize all those algorithms because you know how to do it.
Ian Hawthorne
I should go back to it with my AI knowledge.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Well, you can also, I know you paint, but you now can use AI to do some interesting things. There was a new tool out there that you wrote about called BlendBox. How is BlendBox different than many of the other myriad options, Runway, MidJourney, and like, what and how's it different?
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, so Blend Box is a tool, it's an AI powered tool that was launched by a company called Blockade. And its main selling point is that a lot of platforms like Photoshop, for instance, might have an AI feature that's primarily text driven. And to use those, you have to input text to generate something that might not appear like what you wanted from your text.
And then you have to keep regenerating things. And whenever you'd regenerate things, it might not appear the way you wanted them to appear. Like, if you only wanted to change a small part of the thing that was generated, it'd be kind of tricky.
Dr. Brett Crawford
It is. I've tried that.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, and same with if you've ever worked with like DALL-E 2 or a lot there's tons of those image generators out there now. But what Blendbox markets is basically, it makes it more of a visual practice. So you can generate something with a text input, but then you can select the image, you can zoom in on the image, and you can do a hybrid between AI and actual, I don't want to say Photoshop, because it's not Photoshop, but it's become a verb now. So, you can use digital editing on the AI and selectively focus in on what parts you'd want to change going forward, so it just makes it a little more granule.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And I'm not promoting this product, but is it more like an Adobe's Photoshop or Illustrator or is it more like Procreate? And I don't know if you've been able to drill that down. I think that Procreate has a, a different sense than say an illustrator in terms of it. It's a little more simple and it is definitely more Mac oriented, but I don't know if there is a…The market is designed more for people who are using a Procreate model or people who are higher end and using more some of the Adobe products.
Ian Hawthorne
I think Blendbox is probably trying to land between the two. Okay. I think as evident with the way they've deployed this AI, they really want to target people who want more of a hands on kind of fine touch to it. I don't think this is being marketed to people who just want a quick image or to build something really quick.
I think they want to really capitalize on how do I use AI to like jumpstart a composition, but then continue on and really dig into it as I go so that you can kind of just better integrate AI throughout the whole process, as opposed to it either doing it for you or doing a more minor editing framework at the end.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Interestingly, I think of some of the major artists, I'm saying in painting at the moment and that when they have achieved a particular moment in their careers, right? They will have junior artists or apprentices do a pre paint for them or a particular, you know, “Okay, I've done this now. Can you just fill that in?” So, it's interesting. I'm hearing echoes of that. It's helping me do that thing that I might hire an assistant to start me with.
Ian Hawthorne
Hmm. It's so funny because like I don't know I minored in art history in undergrad and so I always love talks about like labor in the arts and there was, this is outside of AMT Lab, but there was a CBS Sunday Morning piece a while ago about a robot arm sculpting marble and Carrara. Have you seen that?
Dr. Brett Crawford
I did.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, and it was funny because the entire section was talking about, is it art if it's made by an AI robot, or they're basically 3D printing marble sculptures, and the discussion was really interesting because some people saying it's just another tool, people have been using tools. Michelangelo couldn't have made David without the chisel, which is a technology, and then you have more conservative minds saying, no, I want to keep chiseling.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And there were always assistants.
Ian Hawthorne
Exactly.
Dr. Brett Crawford
If that assistant becomes a robot, how is that affecting the labor market? And also, how is that affecting the creativity.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, it’s like there were portrait artists at some point who ran an entire studio and the actual portrait artist whose signature got on the page, he would only paint face basically. You’d have a hand guy; you have a background guy; you have a clothing guy, right?
Dr. Brett Crawford
Yeah. The labor of art and I mean, that's the boon of AI is that it can actually help us in theory. But it is going to affect certain elements of the labor market, and it's affecting the art market as well. So it's an interesting observation, something to keep your, our eyes on as AI continues to mature.
Ian Hawthorne
Do you think it's going to supercharge production to some degree?
Dr. Brett Crawford
Definitely. I mean, it's, it makes everything faster.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. Because I think, I think to take that perspective, it's kind of like instead of having an entire studio with multiple people, a lot more individuals will be able to run the entire vertical, so to speak.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Mm hmm.
Ian Hawthorne
And I do think we're already seeing that.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And, and you, you can spend more time on strategy and less time on… Some of what I would call, and I'm not saying that the, those pieces are mundane, but sort of the beginner, the entry level modes, right? To me that this is bringing me to that other tool, or I guess, company that you posted, which was Spines, which is that new AI agency for publishing.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. Spines is really an interesting case in this month's news. It's basically a company that was founded in 2021 to use AI to help supercharge the self publishing industry. And so what they're doing is they've basically been able to cut a lot of the costs of editing, of market research, of just all of the administrative work behind the scenes that goes on when you're self publishing or working with a publisher to get a book out.
And so they've been able to cut costs by like 90%. And at the end of it, you're buying into them, but you get a distribution deal regardless, as long as you're paying. And they're using AI not only to edit your work, but also to say, “Hey, you're writing fantasy. We know these outlets that we're going to help get you into to sell your work more.'“ And so hopefully it can generate a little more in returns for the people who are on Spines. But it's really fascinating because they're taking the stance that we want the people to keep doing the writing.
They're kind of. The article is interesting because I think, I'd imagine they're not super pro Chat GPT. They don't want AI to write, they want it to edit, they want it to be that assistive tool.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Which I think I'm starting to see is the long term path. Like the marketplace is seeing that AI can generate a book, but it isn't necessarily going to generate a lot of money because the book is an averager. Right? Yeah. So, ultimately, you're getting just a standard book. You're not getting an exceptional book that's finding whatever it's little niches in the storytelling marketplace, and or any other marketplace. It could be visual art. It could be music. It's a helper, but it's not the be all and end all.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. It's always been helpful throughout the course of being at Carnegie Mellon and talking about AI. It really does produce average work and average is totally acceptable sometimes if you're writing a business memo or if you're writing something that doesn't need to be super creative or stand out.
Totally it helps on the labor cuts down costs. I think it's very hard to be an exceptionally artistic editor in the same vein as the way as it helps to be an artistic writer And so I think getting just average editing or pretty straightforward editing which tends to be more Formulaic anyways is really like you said where they're going to shine.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And it has huge value. It has value for business, it has value for artists. I mean, one of the things that takes away from the time for a writer to do their work or for a painter to do their work is some of the mundane elements of business. So if a company can take some of that or AI can help them write that letter to their editor, there's some things that can move the market faster
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, I think that was what stood out to me too, was the idea that it's not just we're gonna edit it with AI, but we're also gonna do all the business management with AI. Because to think of it from an artist's standpoint, you know, if you're writing a book, you write it, and then this takes care of it for you, and then you can get to marketing it, or selling it, and writing your next book.
Dr. Brett Crawford
In a weird way, and we've talked about them serving as a broker or an agent, I think of them as a similar model to a music studio,
Ian Hawthorne
Interesting.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Because ultimately the musicians are still making the music. And yes, AI might be helping with the editing, but then they don't have to, they can just work their magic because they know the field. The AI is assisting and how they know the field much like a music studio.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. And so really you're seeing AI be absorbed by all those middlemen industries, right? Because that's where it's like, we want to cut down on our costs as a studio or as a publishing house or as a gallery, even I'd imagine. I haven't done as much research into this personally, but I'd be interested to see where galleries are using AI.
Dr. Brett Crawford
They're using a lot of it for pricing. Really? Yeah, I talked to somebody who was pursuing their PhD in London. And that's really what their dissertation is studying how places like Sotheby's, Christie's, and other galleries are using AI to serve as a tool for establishing the project of pricing. Because pricing is otherwise knowledge and gut instinct, right? And this is a much more refined way of pinpointing something around taste and market demand.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. Taking a little bit of the intuition out of it and making it a little more grounded. I could, I could imagine.
Dr. Brett Crawford
I appreciate the word intuition versus gut work.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. Synonyms.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Synonyms. I will say the one tool that I did dive into that you wrote about was Encore because I was in my mind thinking, wow, they finally created a tool that I've been wanting.
Ian Hawthorne
Yes. Yeah.
Dr. Brett Crawford
An aggregator for all the thrifting that I like to do online and also in, in person in our marketplace here in Pittsburgh. So you and I talked at one point, it's an interesting opportunity because it takes a long time to go from website to website,
Ian Hawthorne
Definitely.
Dr. Brett Crawford
And so having a tool that aggregates the, I'm pulling from Poshmark, I'm pulling from X, is going to, again, speed up the purchase path, right? And it has a really nice sorting tool.
You know, like you do in anything where I'm looking for a CMU sweatshirt or a CMU shirt, and then you can sort by red, you can sort by large, you can do some sorting from it, and then you're going to find it much faster than if you have to go to five or six locations.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, I'm interested, did you buy anything?
Dr. Brett Crawford
I have not yet, but I have been contemplating my next purchase because I've, there's certain things that I'm, I tend to lean more towards thrifting for. There is a pleasure in thrifting and touching things.
Ian Hawthorne
Definitely, yeah, sorting, sifting through.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Exactly. There's a place near where we live that if I'm allowed to go in, it's just fun and I come out an hour later and I really try not to buy things unless I know I can give them as a gift.
But this is also a great, I use them as sort of an imaginary, like this will help me be creative and thinking about all sorts of different things.
Ian Hawthorne
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, definitely. In my exploring in Encore, I gave it some test runs to see how it works, obviously, before writing about it, but yeah. It made me think about my experience with thrifting and digital thrifting, which I think is clearly becoming a new thing between eBay really leaning into it recently about, because thrifting's cool, thrifting's in. It's sustainable. It's really great. A lot of people love it.
Dr. Brett Crawford
A love that I've been in for decades.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah. It's been in for a while. It's a matter of how in it is. I remember I had this habit of thrifting on Google images where I would go to Google and I'd look up, because I have this kind of thing for like vintage college wear, I like the look of it, but you can't really get it on Amazon, right? It's something you have to thrift, and even in a thrift store it's like kind of a hit or miss.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Your likelihood of finding my alma mater, Northwestern, is lower the further away you get from Illinois. Exactly.
Ian Hawthorne
And so it's like if I want a vintage Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt, I would Google it and then look up the images and you could probably find links from Poshmark or various other sites of.
Varying reliability, because it might be an old image and it was sold. Or it's a dropshipping site that I really don't want to put my credit card info into. And so I think this really helps to introduce a little bit of governance into that, and just a lot more It's like walking into a thrift shop, right?
It's like, I want this pair of shoes, let's see who's actually selling it. And filter by size and price.
Dr. Brett Crawford
I think it's going to hopefully help those smaller thrift shops that have the time to put the material online. But I think of small shops in rural areas that I love to go into. I mean, literally, if you're driving down an empty country road and suddenly you see a sign that says thrift or antiques, and I put quotation, air quotes around that if they could do that, their market will open. And right now they're limited to random people who might be on that road because they are small. They're not destination thrifting. So I think there's, there's an opportunity to find things we've all forgotten about.
Ian Hawthorne
That's really interesting. It makes me think almost like, like Amazon. I still buy a bunch of books on Amazon and it's really interesting to see what bookstores I'm buying it from, because it'll be a bookstore in Kansas that it's getting shipped from, and I always view like digital thrifting from a person to person lens, right? It was always this concept of like someone in Alabama selling this on eBay and it's the only thing I can find on the entire internet. Or the same with Poshmark, it's very much like you have old clothes, let's recycle them, let's thrift them. But I really like that idea of actual thrift shops getting into it and I would be interested to see more about if anybody's actually jumping in on that and how prevalent that is in the industry.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Well, this is fairly new, so hopefully those who are technologically adept will start thinking about this. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's, it's, it could open thrifting for people who want to do it.
Ian Hawthorne
Yeah, if there's any, if there's any listener out there who's managing a thrift store email us.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Or has a family member who manages a thrift store.
Ian Hawthorne
That, yeah, you're welcome.
Dr. Brett Crawford
So are you ready to enter the holiday season as this inspired you?
Are you going to be making things, buying things, using the internet as an imaginary friend?
Ian Hawthorne
I'm still not ready to enter the holiday season. I don't know if I will be until maybe December 25th, but it will help me in all of my procrastination, I think. I think definitely Encore is one I would visit. I would love to do a little more play with NALA. I think there's a lot of people in my family who like art and visual art. And that's one of the reasons I paint is honestly to give, I don't want to say cheap gifts, but you know, affordable gifts. So yeah, I definitely think that it's just, it's nice timing for all this to be happening. It's interesting going forward.
How, how much easier it's going to be to find things online and find things from all over. What about you?
Dr. Brett Crawford
I am hoping this weekend to pull my act together and make my Christmas list for buying what I need to buy. But I think that this will be a nice starting point and a stimulation for what's a good idea. I find at the beginning of a holiday purchasing season. By the way, I have friends who are done in October.
I don't understand that, but I need that moment of, “so what am I thinking about?” We have a local marketplace called Handmade Arcade which is this weekend, which I may go to. Because that's pretty much what I use it for. It's the, is this going to inspire me to figure out what's going to be this sort of thing that's drawing me this year.
Ian Hawthorne
Hmm. That's interesting. That's nice. I'm gonna steal that.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Good.
Ian Hawthorne
I think you have a good point. Like just, it being an imaginary, right. Like, even if you're not gonna buy something, having these spaces to browse, whether it's online or in person.
Dr. Brett Crawford
Well, I wish you the best of luck and a very happy holiday season.
And it's been wonderful to have this conversation with you.
Ian Hawthorne
Thank you. Happy to have you back on.