New Machine Offers AI-Assisted Tattoos
Humans have been getting tattoos for thousands of years. We’ve even found tattoos on the skin of Otzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummy found in the Alps between Italy and Austria. And while the techniques for tattooing haven’t changed much, the technology has — with one company now offering AI-assisted tattoos.
From Austin, Texas, Blackdot Tattoo has created an “automated tattooing system” using a machine that it says precisely applies tattoos to skin.
The machine first uses an algorithm to turn a picture into a design made of very small black dots. It then applies these black dots to human skin like a computer printer, with each deposit of ink being about as wide as a human hair.
Tattooing 101 writes that this is far smaller than the needles usually used by tattoo artists. Human tattoo artists don’t work with such small needles because it’s very easy for them to go too deep into the skin. However, Blackdot says its machine can react to differences in skin and deposit ink in the right place, even with its very small needles.
The machine also means that regular artists who don’t know how to do tattoos can make their own work into body art. Or if someone wants a design from a particular tattoo artist in a different part of the world, the machine could do it without any international travel needed.
New York tattoo shop Bang Bang has been testing the machine since April. The shop calls its machine Aero, meaning “Artist Enabled Robotic Operator.” By July, Aero had done about 30 tattoos on volunteers, though not on any paying customers yet.
