Humans Team Up with Computers to "Breed" Images

Here's a piece of digital art made by ArtBreeder, a website that generates images by machine learning, and then lets you "crossbreed" them to create new offspring.

Here's how Recomendo describes the process: "Using deep learning (AI) algorithms it generates multiple photo-realistic “children” mutations of one image. You — the gardener — select one mutant you like and then breed further generations from its descendants." 

"You can also crossbreed two different images. Very quickly, you can create infinite numbers of highly detailed album covers, logos, game characters, exotic landscapes."

The software currently doesn't "understand" the meaning of writing, but only the appearance of typographic letterforms, so the system churns out images that resemble evocative album cover designs.  

You can also create landscapes that look almost plausible, or combine dissimilar environments and see what results.

Some images appear to morph organic textures with humanoid forms, like this "feather-boa yeti." You could start with an image like this as reference, and then elaborate it with your own old-school sketch process.

Because the judgment of flesh-and-blood humans assists the computer in shaping the evolution of these images, the process yields different results than a generative adversarial network acting alone.

If you want to play with the software, it's free at ArtBreeder.

----

Thanks, Dan