Creating new realities with AI.

Does non-existence end with imagination?

In my Essay on Artbreeder, I explored the creation of non-existent imagery, with the help of a Deep Learning and Image Processing based tool by Joel Simon. Let’s take a little walk across non-existent culture.

Do you know it — your High Fidelity moment? Not that of the failed relationships from the novel of Nick Hornby and movie with John Cusack. I mean, that feeling when you are entering the record store, full of rare and unknown LPs, albums, covers. And then there is another Rob, musical elitist. That one whose reaction is — if you happen to reveal your musical illiteracy:

This feeling occupies me when I am using the section “Albums” of Artbreeder. I should know them. But I cannot. They were created a second before. All these covers emerge from the AI imagination.

Short to Artbreeder: it’s an AI-driven tool, which allows generating images of non-existing things without apparent reference. As a base, it is trained on various image data sets. The results are surreal (read more in my…