Sberbank : Sber AI and media artist Vadim Epstein teach Neural Network Graphics intensive course at British Higher School of Art & Design

The Sber AI team and media artist Vadim Epstein have taught a summer intensive training course called Neural Network Graphics at the British Higher School of Art and Design, which gathered both its students and young designers from outside BHSAD who are interested in AI solutions and their potential use in their works.

The course was supervised and taught by Sber AI team members leading creative AI developments at Sber. Students learnt what neural networks are and how they work, studied the ML basics and methods, text visualization (CLIP), image visualization, and generative adversarial networks (GAN).

After taking the course, students came up with rather unusual scenarios for the use of neural networks. For example, one student combined some of her paintings and received interesting new content. Another student generated a picture in the style of his own grandfather, an artist who is now sick and no longer paints, and the new work turned out to be as close to his style as possible. The course supervisors saw a completely new application of knowledge and technologies when teaching students, which proves there are wide possibilities of using AI in creative work while maintaining the unique identity and style of the author.

We are seeing that the use of new technology in art can help authors even now - not only can they create unusual content, but they can also discover new creative paths and formats. The intensive neural network graphics course has been a logical continuation of several Sber AI education projects in creative artificial intelligence. When it comes to this domain, we find it particularly important to start collaborating with schools like Universal University and the British Higher School of Art and Design because their expertise and experience in modern education are highly valued by established professionals and future students. I am sure that this intensive course will be the beginning of a number of new joint projects.

Alexander Vedyakhin

First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, Sberbank

Tech companies seeing great potential when combining technology and creativity and those interested in training new professionals for their industries come to our university increasingly more often. We are happy that after joining hands with the Sber AI team we managed to launch a course that will rethink the profession of a designer and train you to apply AI knowledge to create visual effects. The neural networks intensive course is one among the Design and Digital Technology courses the British Higher School of Art and Design is launching. We find it crucial to strengthen the ties between scientific&technological advances and art because it is this connection that we believe will give birth to innovations.

Ekaterina Cherkes-zade

Dean, British Higher School of Art & Design; Director at Universal University