(27 Mar) Is AI Art the End of Human Creativity?

There is an increasing overlap between A.I. and the creative arts, whether in music, literature or the visual arts. But what line should we draw (if any) between machine and human creativity? Is it even possible for machines to create art as we recognise it?

Does the development of A.I. mean we must rethink what art is? SUTD will host a great debate between A.I. experts, philosophers, technologists and practicing artists to answer these very questions and to debate the role that A.I. can and should play in the artistic process. A customized A.I. model, BOTicelli, developed and trained by SUTD students, will also participate in the debate alongside real human faculty from SUTD and other universities.

Moderator and Debate Participants

Assoc Prof Alastair Gornall

Alastair Gornall is Associate Professor of History and Religion and Associate Head in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at SUTD. He gained his PhD in Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2013. He has published many articles and a book, Rewriting Buddhism (UCL, 2020)

Dr Samar Faruqi

Samar Faruqi is an art historian and Lecturer at NUS College. She holds a PhD in History of Art from the University of Cambridge. She previously taught at Yale-NUS and was Director of Research at Meem Gallery, Dubai, working on over twenty exhibitions and publications on modern and contemporary art.

Dr Melvin Chen

Melvin Chen is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He holds a PhD in Philosophy and is also a published poet, practising visual artist, and amateur Python programmer. He is the author of Art-Making as Problem-Solving (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Assoc Prof Dorien Herremans

Dorien Herremans is an Associate Professor at SUTD, where she leads the Audio, Music, and AI (AMAAI) Lab. Her research focuses on developing cutting-edge AI technologies for multimodal applications, with a focus on generative models and affective computing for music.

Ng Yi-Sheng

Ng Yi-Sheng is a multidisciplinary, award-winning writer, researcher and activist. He is the co-author of the “Collective Statement from Singapore's Literary Community on AI”, which advised the National Language to proceed with caution in the endorsement of Generative AI technology.

Assoc Prof Stylianos Dritsas

Stylianos Dritsas is Associate Professor and Associate Head of Pillar in Architecture and Sustainable Design at SUTD. His research focuses on design computation and digital fabrication, with extensive interdisciplinary work across science, engineering, medicine, and marine biology.

Asst Prof Ryutaro Uchiyama

Ryutaro Uchiyama is an interdisciplinary behavioral scientist bridging evolutionary biology, computational neuroscience, and cultural psychology. He is an Assistant Professor at SUTD and holds a PhD from LSE and an MA from Cornell. He has also worked as a spatial designer in Tokyo.