Just in time for Halloween MIT has started a project to generate scary imagery using an image processing algorithm based on artificial intelligence, specifically through deep learning. The algorithm can recognize and generate scary faces and make places look scarily. It is interesting to think about the purpose of this experiment, because can machines make us scared? The result is scarily accurate.
The image generation works through several steps. First it uses deep learning to generate completely new faces. Subsequently a filter with extra imagery is applied to scarify to the faces. After that the system learns from a voting system about the extent of scariness. The system that is behind this algorithm is based on unsupervised learning with convolutional networks (CNNs) and convolutional generative adversarial networks (DCGANs). If you want to read more about this, find the very interesting and recent conference paper by Chintala, Metz and Radford (2016) at https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06434.
The cool thing is that you can help training the algorithm by going to http://nightmare.mit.edu/faces. After trying it myself I do not think that the machine still needs a big increment in learning anymore as the pictures already look quite scary. What do you think?
It is also interesting to think about the possibilities of this development in the future. Chintala, Metz and Redford (2016) imagine future applicabilities in video prediction as well as for audio. I imagine implications in for example virtual reality in which the environment is automatically generated with the intent to make you scared. The system could learn from how you react on the input and personalize the algorithm to make you even more scared. Moreover just think about how this can be applied to theme parks to make those experiences even more immersive!
All in all this development is a step towards a scary but also very exciting future!
If you have any comments or other ideas for similar applications in artificial intelligence, let me know! If you want to read more about the algorithm go to http://nightmare.mit.edu.
http://boingboing.net/2016/10/23/using-machine-learning-to-auto.html
http://nightmare.mit.edu/faces
http://nightmare.mit.edu
https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.06434
Image from http://boingboing.net/2016/10/23/using-machine-learning-to-auto.html
