Drue Kataoka Studios

Women in GenAI National Leadership Council awarded Drue Kataoka the 2025 Artificial Intelligence Innovator Award at the inaugural Women in Gen AI summit and awards hosted by Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley. Watch the video here.

If you are a parent, like me, do you carry a photo of your children with you?    If you are a mother,  you may be surprised to learn that 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘰 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 and 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 —𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘀 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 —decades after the end of a pregnancy.
Watch the video here.

✨Did you know that fetal stem cells can 𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 and to the site of an injury, such as where a heart attack, occurred. The stem cells then reprogram themselves as 𝗯𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹𝘀 to aid in its repair. ❤️‍🩹

✨As a mother of two young toddlers, I was inspired to create this piece, imagining what those cells felt and perceived if they could feel and perceive, as microscopic individual entities.🔬

✨This artwork explores an 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗻𝗱, 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 — reimagined through the lens of form, texture, and light.  The art reflects on presence, repair, and memory at a microscopic scale — inspired by the science that our children’s cells remain within us. 🌌

✨Expressed in the language of #Ambrosia — a signature artwork style from my studio. Traditionally physical sculptures, but now also born through AI.

✨We trained a custom LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation ) on a curated dataset of my Ambrosia works, creating synthetic Ambrosia harnessing artificial intelligence. Watch the video here.

How does an AI model perceive a person? How does it begin to understand who they are? Why is it that the fragmentary and elusive nature of human memory makes it more beautiful?These questions drive some of my latest experiments—training custom AI models on my own image, then placing them in worlds I imagined and animated.Walking through a mirrored desert of my mind, several AI versions of me exist in a space that is both familiar and surreal, a construct of memory, data, and imagination. A reflection of self, refracted through technology.The appearance & disappearance of each figure down to the fraction of a second and the meaning behind that is deliberate. There are always easter eggs & layers upon layers in my works. Sunglasses by Christian Dior Couture. Watch the full video here.

💡 Is “AI art” more art or more programming? 🤔
Watch the video here

💡 For this artwork, I trained a custom LoRA. 🎨🤖 LoRA stands for Low-Rank Adaptation and is a technique for fine-tuning large machine learning models, creating a bespoke adaptation.

💡 So I trained the LoRA on a curated dataset of my Ambrosia series, optimizing the model to retain the intricate textures and color dynamics 🎭 of the original physical works. I further refined and expanded the digital model with RunwayML for generative augmentation and Topaz for upscaling and noise reduction, preserving fine details while allowing for creative extrapolation. 🖌️✨

💡 You know, I think the beauty of these tools lies in their combinatorial power—each iteration opens up infinite new pathways for artistic evolution. 🚀🔮

💡 By the way, the original Ambrosia series is meticulously fabricated with real-world materials, presenting unique engineering challenges. 🏗️ Ambrosia has become one of our signature works, renowned for its dynamic interplay with light—an interactive medium we’ve developed with over 169 billion physical configuration permutations. 💎💡 Conceptually inspired by neural networks, the Ambrosia mimics the way information propagates through weighted layers—just as light refracts, reflects, and transforms through their intricate structures, continually modifying, obfuscating, and revealing new forms. 🔄🔬

💡 So, taking images of physical Ambrosia works, encoding their intricate structures into LoRAs, and transforming them through a custom AI workflow feels like coming full circle—bridging the physical and digital realms in an endless feedback loop of creation and iteration. 🔄🌍💡

Watch me speak 7 languages in 1 minute. I fabricated an avatar (using various AI tools & techniques) that I can use to say anything in any language. I made the original videos and images in my art studio in Silicon Valley where I was standing in front of one of my real life Ambrosia artworks. What do you think? 


Watch it here.