MSc AI for the Creative Industries
ASSESSMENT
AI and its Application in Creative Practice
TFT00112M-A
ASSESSMENT HAND IN: Thursday 23rd January 2025, noon (12:00)
AIM
Through this assessment you are expected to demonstrate the ability to analyse the impact of AI - bee it a tool, a technique, or artificial intelligence in general - upon an area or a project of creative practice. Discussing and analysing technical details about the AI technology employed would matter, but they are not necessary. The focus of this assignment is on your understanding of the disruptions generated by AI to creative processes, evaluating what AI is good at, what it is not (yet), and how it could be included in human-AI co-creative processes. The perspective in working on and writing up this assignment could be that of a consultant commissioned to do an analysis of a tool, a practical project, a research project or of an area of practice which either has already been impacted upon by AI or may foreseeably be so.
The same brief applies to both Master level and Undergraduate Year 3 level students. However, the assessment differs: masters students are expected to demonstrate a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the chosen area of study.
BRIEF
There are a few ways of approaching this assignment and you are free to choose one which best suits your interest.
BRIEF: Option #1: exploration through practice
Choose:
• one area of creative practice (e.g. painting, photography, film, TV, advertisement, writing, games, virtual theatre, etc.)
• one or more AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, DALL-E, Stable Difusion, Runway ML, Move.AI, Descript, etc.) that could be used in this area
• and one project (or creative goal)
and explore the capabilities of the AI tool(s) through your own practice, in a manner like what has been presented by some of you in our earlier seminars.
In your report you should:
• describe the area and the project (artistic goal)
• give an overview of the AI tool/system you decided to experiment with by:
o summarising the technical details, focusing on the method of
controlling its output (prompts, etc.), but capturing also installation aspects, if the tool is not readily available through a web browser
o you can also provide a brief account of the position of the tool on the market, (reviews by experts regarding its performance, projects in which it was used, business details, competitors, etc.)
• describe the iterative development process
o capture the main steps
o for each step, discuss the performance of the tool, capturing both strengths and weaknesses
• upon the completion of the process – be it successful or unsuccessful – perform. a critical analysis of the development process
o generalise (some of) the project-specific conclusions (captured above) to the whole application area
o compare with other tools, using expert reviews
o make predictions with regards to the future use of this or similar tools in the application area you chose
• draw final conclusions with regards to the impact of AI in general on the application area of your choice.
SUBMISSION
You will have to submit two files
• a pdf report including the aspects described above; the report should contain pictures, diagrams, screenshots which have been essential to your development to help you back up the argument; outputs that aren’t critical to the argument should be inserted in appendices, clearly labelled and also submit (see below) – there can be referred to from the main text, where needed; the word limit is
o maximum 3500 words - Masters
o maximum 2500 words - UG Year 3
• key outputs (e.g. pictures, videos, music files, etc. – see above) and/or screen recordings to illustrate the workflows involved in their production; these should be appropriately labelled and described (e.g. in a read.me file)
All the files should be zipped together and submitted as one file only. You will receive instruction on where and how to upload it on our systems from the school’s Administrative Office.
BRIEF: Option #2: exploration through literature review
Choose an area of creative practice and analyse AI’s impact on it to date and make informed predictions about the future. As sources you can use academic or industry research papers, white papers coming from industry, expert analyses published online or in print, analyses performed by technical journalists, and even marketing material used by various companies, as long as it is appropriately interpreted. Please refer to the marking section below to understand which aspects you should/could include in your analysis.
SUBMISSION
You will submit one pdf report of maximum 3500 words - Masters or maximum 2500 words - UG Year 3. You will receive instruction on where and how to upload it on our systems from the school’s Administrative Office.
USE OF EXTERNAL SOURCES AND ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT
You can use any external sources in your analysis as long as you correctly reference them.
ETHICS
You should observe the principles of ethical research and development adhered to by the University.
MARKING
Option #1 (the last two columns represent the proportion of the criterion in the final mark for masters and undergraduate, respectively):
|
Criterion
|
Masters
|
UG
|
|
Problem statement, context, novelty of the project
(contextualisation to related work), overview of the AI tools used in the development (identify opportunities and
generate new concepts and designs for applications of AI in creative media and performance)
|
15%
|
15%
|
|
Creative workflow – iterative development (richness of
features of the tools, extensiveness of their application in the project, iterative development)
|
45%
|
55%
|
|
Depth and comprehensiveness of the critical analysis (justify and critique choices of different parameters, methods and
techniques in relation to creative goals, identify strengths and weaknesses of the creative workflow you employed, generalise findings, make informed predictions)
|
40%
|
30%
|
Option #2 (the last two columns represent the proportion of the criterion in the final mark for masters and undergraduate, respectively):
|
Criterion
|
Masters
|
UG
|
|
Problem statement: clarity, novelty, comprehensiveness and contextualisation (identify opportunities and analyse new
concepts and workflows involving applications, or possible applications, of AI in creative media and performance)
|
15%
|
15%
|
|
Literature review, appropriateness, comprehensiveness and completeness (number, diversity and relevance of the
sources used)
|
45%
|
55%
|
|
Depth and comprehensiveness of the critical analysis
(coherence of the argument, novelty of the interpretations, informed generalisations and predictions)
|
40%
|
30%
|
This assessment is worth 100% of the overall mark for this module.