Thanks to a byproduct of Machine Learning known as Deep Learning, neural networks are beginning to learn to not only visualize objects, but to encapsulate it all and to generate creative works of art as a result.
“I think that per Michelangelo, I think he was right; perception and creativity are very intimately connected. What we’ve just seen are neural networks that are entirely trained to discriminate, or to recognize different things in the world, able to be run in reverse, to generate.”
– Blaise Agüera y Arcas
As a result, Arcas and his team are now able to teach these machines how to express their perceptions in ways of which we would’ve never thought possible. Many today might even deny that computers are able to be creative, claiming that only humans are uniquely capable of such.
Though, as Arcas noted in his talk, “perception and creativity are by no means uniquely human. We start to have computer models that can do exactly these sorts of things. And that ought to be unsurprising; the brain is computational.”
Sorry, humans. It looks like there’s a new player in town and its creative works so far are on fleek!