Design studio earned on neural network projects, passing it off as a real designer
Art. Lebedev Studio, the Russian design studio, developed artificial design intelligence and for more than a year passed it off as a real person. During this time, the neural network has completed more than 20 commercial projects.
The project was developed in strict secrecy by an isolated team. For conspiracy, AI was passed off as a remote employee. The team created its own page with a portfolio and gave a human name Nikolay Ironov. This allowed them to avoid leaks and get objective feedback, which wouldn’t be affected by the prejudices of generative design.
The neural network is a «complex system» that analyzes information about the customer company, develops the semantic core and generates a stream of relevant images for each individual case, the creators of Nikolay Ironov claim. According to them, many factors influence its decisions, and it can replace a person at any stage of work on the logo.
The results are: for a whole year, it developed logos for real customers (among them were well-known bloggers, cafes, bars, applications, and consumer goods). You can view the neural network’s portfolio here.
The profile image of Nikolay is also synthesized. It was created by a neural network based on photos of the studio’s employees.
None of the customers knew that the logos they received were created by the AI. The work was accepted by customers and broadcast to a huge audience. Today, Ironov’s work is adorned with signs of establishments in various cities of Russia, thousands of print runs of branded products, and an infinite number of commercials on YouTube. As the creators of Ironov say, the AI creates truly new designs, offers surprisingly bold and unexpected ideas.
Thanks to the unique style, many of the logos were massively discussed on the Internet, the media and large communities wrote about them. Although, the opinions regarding the design of logos are different: some find them interesting, for others, they are strange and not worth the money spent.
