Google is bringing its artificial intelligence technology deeper into the world of contemporary art through a new creative residency with Berlin-based LAS Art Foundation, giving artists access to AI tools as they develop experimental new works. The partnership brings together Google’s technology researchers and artists Xin Liu and Eunjo Lee, who are using generative AI, machine learning and other emerging technologies as part of their creative processes.
Image Courtesy : Xin Liu, nom nom (2026). Commissioned by LAS Art Foundation in Collaboration with Google Arts and Culture
The residency is part of Google's broader effort to explore how artificial intelligence can influence fields outside traditional technology applications. Rather than treating AI simply as a productivity tool, the program examines how artists can use emerging technology as a medium for experimentation, storytelling and artistic expression. Through the partnership with LAS Art Foundation, the participating artists have been able to work with Google researchers and technology while developing projects that explore questions surrounding perception, identity, memory and the relationship between humans and machines.
LAS Art Foundation has established itself around projects that bring art, science and technology together, making it a natural partner for Google's exploration of AI-driven creativity. The organization works with artists, scientists, technologists and other collaborators to create experiences that examine how emerging technologies can change the way people understand the world around them. The residency gives artists an opportunity to experiment with AI in an environment where technological experimentation is treated as part of the artistic process rather than simply as a tool for producing finished images.
Xin Liu is one of the artists participating in the program. Her work frequently examines themes involving technology, space, memory and human experience, and the residency gives her another opportunity to investigate how technological systems can shape perception. By working with Google AI tools, Liu can incorporate computational processes into her creative practice while exploring what happens when human intuition and machine-generated material influence one another.
Eunjo Lee is also developing new work through the residency, bringing her own artistic perspective to the relationship between technology and creative expression. Her project demonstrates how AI can become part of an artist's experimentation rather than simply functioning as an automated content-generation system. Instead of asking AI to replace traditional creative decisions, the residency encourages artists to use the technology to introduce new possibilities, unexpected results and alternative ways of approaching a piece.
The projects also demonstrate the growing range of ways artists can work with AI. Generative systems can create images, text, sound and other forms of media based on prompts and datasets, but artists can also manipulate those systems, introduce their own materials and use machine-generated results as starting points for further experimentation. That makes AI less like a conventional software application and more like a new creative environment whose behavior can itself become part of the artistic process.
Google's involvement gives the artists access to technologies developed through its broader AI research ecosystem. The company has invested heavily in generative AI, computer vision, language models and multimodal systems capable of processing different types of information. Those technologies can provide artists with new methods for combining visual, textual and conceptual elements that previously would have required separate tools and workflows.
The collaboration also raises questions about authorship. When an artist creates a work using an AI system, the resulting piece can involve decisions made by the artist, the behavior of the model, the data used to train the system and the interaction between human instructions and machine-generated output. The residency provides an opportunity to explore those questions through actual artistic practice rather than treating them solely as theoretical debates.
That relationship between human creativity and machine-generated material is becoming increasingly important as generative AI becomes easier to use. Tools capable of creating sophisticated images and videos are now available to consumers, designers and professional artists, dramatically lowering the technical barrier for producing certain types of digital media. Programs such as Google's residency with LAS Art Foundation are instead exploring what happens when artists deliberately incorporate those systems into more experimental and conceptually driven work.
The projects are also part of a broader movement among cultural institutions to investigate AI. Museums, galleries and art organizations are increasingly experimenting with artificial intelligence as both a subject and a medium. Some exhibitions examine the social consequences of AI, while others give artists direct access to machine-learning systems and invite them to explore the technology's creative possibilities.
For Google, partnerships with artists offer a different way to understand its own technology. Engineers and researchers typically evaluate AI systems through technical benchmarks, user studies and practical applications. Artists can approach the same technology from a completely different direction, asking questions that may not have obvious technical answers. They can deliberately introduce ambiguity, unpredictability and emotional interpretation into systems that are normally designed to produce useful outputs.
That creative experimentation can also reveal limitations in AI systems. Artists often push technology beyond the circumstances for which it was originally designed, exposing unusual behaviors, unexpected outputs and gaps in how a system interprets human concepts. Those discoveries can become part of the artwork itself while also providing researchers with a different perspective on how people interact with AI.
The partnership with LAS Art Foundation fits into Google's larger interest in supporting artists working with technology. Google has previously collaborated with cultural organizations and artists through initiatives focused on digital creativity, computational art and emerging technology. These programs allow the company to place its AI tools into environments where experimentation and cultural interpretation are as important as commercial applications.
For the artists, access to advanced AI tools can expand the possibilities available during the development process. An artist might use generative systems to rapidly explore visual concepts, simulate environments, transform existing materials or investigate relationships between different forms of data. The technology can make it possible to explore dozens or even hundreds of conceptual directions before settling on a final artistic approach.
However, the residency does not necessarily suggest that AI-generated material will replace conventional artistic methods. Instead, the projects demonstrate how AI can become one component of a much larger creative workflow. Artists can combine machine-generated material with photography, sculpture, video, sound, physical installations and traditional forms of artistic production.
That hybrid approach is particularly relevant to LAS Art Foundation's mission. The organization frequently creates immersive experiences in which technology is not simply displayed but becomes part of the environment surrounding the audience. AI can contribute to those experiences by allowing artworks to respond dynamically to information, generate changing content or create interactions that would be difficult to reproduce through a fixed piece of media.
The collaboration also arrives at a time when the art world is grappling with questions about the rapidly expanding use of generative AI. Artists have raised concerns about training data, copyright, compensation and the use of creative works in the development of AI models. At the same time, other artists are actively embracing the technology and experimenting with ways to incorporate it into their practices.
The Google and LAS Art Foundation residency does not eliminate those debates, but it provides a setting in which some of the questions can be explored through artistic experimentation. By putting artists directly in conversation with AI researchers and technology developers, the program creates a space where technological and cultural perspectives can influence one another.
One of the most interesting aspects of the partnership is the possibility that the resulting artworks could challenge conventional ideas about what an artwork is. Traditional works generally have a fixed physical or digital form, while AI-based works can potentially change based on prompts, inputs, environmental information or interactions with viewers. That introduces an element of uncertainty that can become part of the experience.
AI can also give artists new ways to work with time and memory. A system can generate variations of a piece, reconstruct visual material, transform archived information or combine historical references with newly generated content. For artists such as Liu and Lee, these capabilities can become a way to investigate how technology influences human perception and how digital systems mediate memories and experiences.
The partnership ultimately reflects a larger shift in the way artificial intelligence is being integrated into creative industries. AI is no longer limited to technical laboratories or business software. It is increasingly becoming part of filmmaking, music, photography, design, fashion and contemporary art, with creators experimenting with both its capabilities and its limitations.
Google's collaboration with LAS Art Foundation places that experimentation within a particularly research-oriented environment. Rather than simply demonstrating what an AI model can generate, the residency asks artists to explore what the technology means when incorporated into a sustained creative practice. The resulting work can therefore serve as both art and an investigation into the changing relationship between humans and intelligent machines.
As Xin Liu and Eunjo Lee continue developing their projects, the residency offers a glimpse into how artists may approach AI in the years ahead. The most interesting applications may not necessarily involve asking a machine to make an artwork entirely on its own. Instead, they may emerge when artists use AI as an unpredictable collaborator, experimental medium or conceptual instrument.
The partnership between Google and LAS Art Foundation ultimately shows how the boundaries between technology and contemporary art are continuing to blur. By giving artists access to advanced AI systems and encouraging them to experiment with those technologies, the program creates an environment where machine intelligence becomes part of the creative conversation. As AI tools become increasingly sophisticated, collaborations like this could play an important role in exploring not only what machines can create, but also how their presence changes the way humans create, interpret and experience art.