Techniques for imposing a structure on the latent space of neural networks have seen much development in recent years. Clustering techniques used for classification have been used to great success, and with this work we hope to bridge the gap between contrastive losses and Generative models. We introduce an embedding loss derived from Triplet loss to show that attributes and information can be clustered in specific dimensions in the latent space of Variational Auto-Encoders. This allows control over the embedded attributes via manipulation of these latent space dimensions. This work also serves to take steps towards the usage of any data augmentation when applying Triplet loss to Variational Auto-Encoders. In this work three different Variational Auto-Encoders are trained on three different datasets to embed information in three different ways using this novel method. Our results show the method working to varying degrees depending on the implementation and the information embedded. Two experiments using image data and one using waveform audio shows that the method is modality invariant. / Tekniker för att införa en struktur i det latenta utrymmet i neurala nätverk har sett mycket utveckling under de senaste åren. Kluster metoder som används för klassificering har använts till stor framgång, och med detta arbete hoppas vi kunna brygga gapet mellan kontrastiva förlustfunktioner och generativa modeller. Vi introducerar en förlustfunktion för inbäddning härledd från triplet loss för att visa att attribut och information kan klustras i specifika dimensioner i det latenta utrymmet hos variationsautokodare. Detta tillåter kontroll över de inbäddade attributen via manipulering av dessa dimensioner i latenta utrymmet. Detta arbete tjänar också till att ta steg mot användningen av olika data augmentationer när triplet loss tillämpas på generativa modeller. Tre olika Variationsautokodare tränas på tre olika dataset för att bädda in information på tre olika sätt med denna nya metod. Våra resultat visar att metoden fungerar i varierande grad beroende på hur den tillämpas och vilken information som inbäddas. Två experiment använder bild-data och ett använder sig av ljud, vilket visar på att metoden är modalitetsinvariant.

This master’s thesis investigates generative AI-art through the lens of actor network theory. By focusing on the role of images in datasets as a material that effects both AI-models and artworks, the decisively non-human agencies generative AI-models can be said to possess, and the traces and associations that generative AI-models imbue artworks with, this thesis aims to investigate art that has been created with GAN-models as well as contemporary text-to-image diffusion-models, by way of similar premises. Forgoing common discussions and questions regarding the status of AI-art as art that inundate many a reasoning regarding this topic, this thesis instead investigates the use of generative AI to make images and art with an understanding of it as a multifaceted practice that can be observed and experienced in a variety of ways.  General topics such as the way images are used to train AI-models, the blurry connections between trained images and generated images, the way AI-models can be used and interacted with by using prompts as well as different kinds of interfaces and AI-Image-generators, are investigated, followed by the analysis of a number of artworks for which generative AI has been used. Throughout this study generative AI-art emerges as a both novel and oftentimes contested artform that is defined by direct and indirect connection to other media, a varied understanding of what it is that the artificial intelligence appears to do, and a use of the AI-artwork as a means to comment the mediums emerging characteristics.