Everybody knows about using patents as a way to protect new inventions. Unless you are a patent attorney, you probably only know about one of the three major types, utility patents. However, there are two other types, design and plant patents. Currently, there are over 10 million granted utility patents, 910 thousand design patents, and almost 32 thousand plant patents.

If you guessed that plant patents are for new varieties of plants, you would be correct! But what are design patents? Here’s the definition from the US Patent and Trademark Office:

“The patent laws provide for the granting of design…

In July 2019, an inventor named Stephen Thaler filed for a patent for a warning beacon that flashes in a special way to get people’s attention. On the patent application form, Thaler listed himself as the applicant and the assignee but not the inventor. Who invented this improved beacon? A better question is what invented this improved beacon?

The answer is DABUS, which stands for “Device Autonomously Bootstrapping Uniform Sensibility” [1]. This is a neural network that Thaler created and trained to invent things. (Brief side note: the improved beacon, in turn, uses a neural network to attract the attention…

Back in August 2020, I created a project called MachineRay that uses Nvidia’s StyleGAN2 to create new abstract artwork based on early 20th century paintings that are in the public domain. Since then, Nvidia has released a new version of their AI model, StyleGAN2 ADA, that is designed to yield better results when generating images from a limited dataset [1]. (I’m not sure why they didn't call it StyleGAN3, but I’ll refer to the new model as SG2A to save a few characters). In this article, I’ll show you how I used SG2A to create better looking abstract paintings.

MachineRay 2

Overview

Similar…

Since January 1, 2019, many of Robert Frost’s poems have entered the public domain [1], including works like “Mending Wall” and “The Road Not Taken”. In this article, I’ll show how his poems can be used to improve the structure, phrasing, and emotional content of computer-generated music. For example, here is the first verse from one of Frost’s more famous poems from his book, New Hampshire [2].

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (excerpted) Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his…

Overview

In this post, I’ll show you how I built an AI 8-Ball that can answer yes/no questions using the power of the Internet and current Machine Learning techniques. I’ll start with a high-level description of the system and then get into the details of the components along with excerpts of the Python code. I’ll show how you can get both a percentage no-to-yes answer and a percentage confidence level as outputs. Finally, I’ll give instructions on how to run the AI 8-Ball to answer your own questions.

Background

Have you ever used a Magic 8-Ball? It was a toy introduced by…

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Netflix series, Connected. It’s a good show. The host, Latif Nasser, discusses various subjects in popular science. Netflix touts it as a series “that investigates the surprising and intricate ways in which we are connected to each other, the world and the universe.” [1]

In Numbers, the fourth episode, Latif explores Benford’s Law (BL), also known as the First Digit Law. It’s an observation that many datasets, both man-made and from nature, contain more digits that start with the number 1 than any other digit, about 30% of all numbers. And…

In this post, I’ll show you how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) can be used to help you get a start on that novel you always wanted to write. I’ll begin with a brief background on how computers process text using AI. Then I’ll describe how I set up an ML model called GPT-2 to generate new plot summaries, and give instructions on how you can create some new story ideas for yourself.

This is the second part of my series of articles on how AI can be used for creative endeavors. …

For the past three months, I have been exploring the latest techniques in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to create abstract art. During my investigation, I learned that three things are needed to create abstract paintings: (A) source images, (B) an ML model, and (C) a lot of time to train the model on a high-end GPU. Before I discuss my work, let’s take a look at some prior research.

This is the first part of my series of articles on how AI can be used for creative endeavors. …