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The 2025 AI Unlocked Experience: The Intersection of AI and Creativity
Norman Moon
On Oct 4th I had the opportunity to experience the AI Unlocked event hosted by Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) at National Landing in Crystal City. An event that showed the intersection between AI and creativity across multiple sectors. The event brought together a diverse crowd with many different backgrounds, all showing the unique ways they use AI in their work.
The day featured many live demos, student outreach programs, graduate studies, and hands-on activities for all. Participants could play virtual reality games, take photos edited with AI, and listen to expert presentations.
Art and AI
A large focus of the event was on showing how artificial intelligence is changing and shaping art. Refik Anadol gave a wonderful keynote presentation about how he uses LNMs (large nature models) to create art showcased at the DataLand Museum, the world’s first museum of AI arts. He used different weather measuring devices to gather information about a certain location and had different qualities of a pixel representing various weather measurements. For example, precipitation can be shown by color, wind speeds by pixel velocity, and humidity by pixel density. These artworks allow Refik Anadol to use AI to create art that changes and reacts almost as if it’s alive. His pieces inspire and bring awareness to different weather conditions around the world.
Another interesting talk came from Catherine Anchin, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. In an inspiring presentation, she explained how the art world has begun to adopt AI and how museums fit into that story. She noted that one of the biggest hurdles regarding AI within the art world is the importance of having all parties: museums, artists, policymakers, and the art market, to communicate with each other about how they would like to see AI grow within art and what constitutes acceptable use. It was this presentation that made me reflect on the complexity of AI adoption in any field.
Entertainment and AI
I was excited to see how AI has also been shaping entertainment. There was a very popular presentation on how AI affects music by Aysedeniz Gökçin. She showed how AI can allow small artists to bring entire orchestra pieces to life. She explained that for many artists, funding can be an almost unscalable wall. Artificial intelligence allows artists to circumvent these restrictions and bring their ideas and creativity to life. Aysedeniz was very talented on the piano and in singing, and she showed how she was able to use different AI models to add string instruments and visual designs to her music.
Throughout the event, there were many booths using AI to enhance entertainment as well. From creating your own music with AI to editing photos right on the spot, these booths showcased the value AI brings to participant engagement.
Research and AI
While the event was mainly focused on a family-friendly environment, there were still presentations that catered to those who are more technologically inclined towards AI. For example, I was happy to interact with a booth from a Virginia Tech graduate student who came to National Landing to present Fine Tuning LLMs Against Adversarial Attacks. He explained that he and his team used four different models to help fine-tune Meta’s open-source Llama LLM to categorize messages as scam or not.
Healthcare innovation was also on display. The Radiology Partners (RP) booth explained how a prevailing issue hospitals face is consistent health reporting. RP is proposing to use AI to create standardized reports gathered from private practice radiologists. Once the report is generated by artificial intelligence, it’s checked by RP and, partnered hospitals can be confident that the reports they receive will be uniform and consistent regardless of who the radiologist was that wrote them.
Final Thoughts
Overall, AI Unlocked at National Landing left me energized by the possibilities ahead. I met a lot of interesting people who are trail blazing in their respective sectors and I heard great presentations from people who are asking questions about how the arts, entertainment, education and ethics fit in this up and coming AI world.
Events like this remind us that the future of AI isn’t just about technology but it’s also about people, imagination, and the ways we choose to shape progress together.
Pictured: Author, Norman Moon
