10-02-2018 CODE.ART

10-02-2018 CODE.ART

A Google intern built the AI behind these shockingly good fake images
A new algorithm called BigGAN creates detailed photos from scratch, representing a leap forward for AI. But it may come at a steep price.

BY KATHARINE SCHWAB

For years, artists and researchers have been experimenting with training neural networks to generate images that look real. But most of them look like strangely distorted, grotesque caricatures of how a computer thinks the world looks.

No longer. Over the weekend, a Google intern and two researchers from Google’s DeepMind division released a paper, currently under review for a 2019 conference, featuring AI-generated images that blow everything else out of the water. Based on the small thumbnails, it’s almost impossible to tell that they’re not real images: There’s a chestnut-colored dog with his tongue hanging out, a beautiful ocean vista, a monarch butterfly, and a juicy hamburger complete with melted cheese and a bun that looks like it was brushed with butter. The textures of the images, from the dog’s fur to the hamburger’s juices, are incredibly realistic, with careful study revealing only tiniest of tells that the image isn’t a real one.