Friday, January 3, 2020
Computer-Generated Insect Illustrations
This video shows the output of a generative adversarial computer network creating plausible looking bug illustrations. The GAN was trained on thousands of public-domain images of insects painted by natural history artists.
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Via BoingBoing
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4 comments:
It may seem impressive (even if it is producing variations of a very limited subject - indeed, a single subject in a single style), but if you look at it, you'll see that the network is dumb. It makes the segments of the tarsus flow along the limb like the "marching ants" effect - it simply imitates the input without analyzing it in any way. It is highly unlikely, for instance, that they could use this network to morph between beetles and spiders or even beetles and ants. You'd get strange morphing effects with half-formed leg and wing images.
In short, this is more of the same "AI" hype: seemingly powerful, but extremely limited in reality.
Eugene, I don't see how it's "AI hype" if I never even mention AI. I believe I described it pretty accurately without making grand claims. I find it mesmerizing to watch, but I may be more easily mesmerized than you.
It's like watching an accelerated view of a species mutating and evolving.
This is amazing!
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