"blobs of flesh with tendrils and limbs randomly growing out"
April 23, 2018 3:15 PM   Subscribe

Robbie Barrat, a recent high school graduate from West Virginia and AI enthusiast, used a type of artificial intelligence called a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to scan thousands of nude paintings from WikiArt. Using two neural networks, a generator and a discriminator, the GAN essentially mimics distribution of data — from images and music to speech — to create its own versions. Barrat's experiment did not go well. posted by Johnny Wallflower (48 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
int main()
{
cout << "Send nudes!";
return 0;
}
posted by deadaluspark at 3:19 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


the dark red bits in between the gaps in skin look oddly like bloodied flesh - there was nothing like that in the training set, though.

į̛͞҉t͏̡͟͠͞ ͘͝͏̸b͜҉è̶̶͝g͝͡i̶̡̛͜͞n͢s͏̶̕͟͟
posted by Vic Morrow's Personal Vietnam at 3:24 PM on April 23, 2018 [12 favorites]


Sort of an A.I. Francis Bacon...
posted by jim in austin at 3:25 PM on April 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


Photos courtesy of The Journal of Transporter Accident Medicine.
posted by j_curiouser at 3:29 PM on April 23, 2018 [42 favorites]


Reminds me of "shunting" from the horror-satire "Society".
posted by JamesBay at 3:36 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Doesn't look like anything to me.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:38 PM on April 23, 2018 [13 favorites]


I thought of Francis Bacon too, I wonder what would happen if they just fed this his entire oeuvre.

Probably better not to try.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:38 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


Woah - twitter like, *instantly* flagged these as being sensitive;

So, we've figured out what porn looks like to robots, anyway.
posted by Sequence at 3:41 PM on April 23, 2018 [23 favorites]


Barrat's experiment did not go well.

Agree to disagree.
posted by Fizz at 3:42 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


I see naum gabo
posted by clavdivs at 3:42 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


These are probably some of the most artistically relevant nudes to be created in the past century.

previously: Is it still an artistically justifiable pursuit for a man neural network to paint generate a naked woman blob of flesh?
posted by subocoyne at 3:43 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


We don't know that those are naked blobs of flesh.

The blobs of flesh themselves might actually be covered in a smooth downy coat of fur, and just wearing human skin as their clothing.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:55 PM on April 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


I wonder what it would be like for an AI to take a prurient interest in humans. IIRC that was a minor theme in some of Iain Banks' books. Maybe this is actually a sort of foretaste of the frontiers of pornography.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:57 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


What's weird is when you feed it Francis Bacon you just get really bland porn.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:01 PM on April 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


I think they all look nice. I find the complete mindlessness of them quite soothing. It's like looking at a nice picture without any of the bother of there being another mind trying to communicate something. All we have to do now is get rid of the "nice picture" element and we'll have electronically replicated the last two decades of Damien Hirst's career.
posted by howfar at 4:01 PM on April 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's obvious that those are naked shoggoths, which probably comes from Barrat mixing up his training sets of naked showgirls and naked goths. It could happen to anyone.

Fortunately, what happened to the plucky teen soon after isn't likely to happen to anyone else.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:03 PM on April 23, 2018 [9 favorites]


Okay, I'm just gonna call the SCP Foundation and then take some amnestics.
posted by FJT at 4:08 PM on April 23, 2018 [7 favorites]


"did not go well" the cufk you say! This shit is great!
posted by mwhybark at 4:09 PM on April 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's only a matter of time before humans are no longer required for pornography. Production, dissemination, and consumption all automated by artificial intelligence. Once the handover is complete, humanity will truly be unnecessary.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:12 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


Or maybe that's what people ACTUALLY look like and it's only the alien implants that make us see symmetrical bodies?
posted by Docrailgun at 4:31 PM on April 23, 2018


Or Dinild Trimp?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:56 PM on April 23, 2018 [6 favorites]


GANs are extremely cool but also notoriously hard to train correctly (the 5000 or so arXiv papers claiming to have discovered One Weird Trick for Training GANs! Professors Hate It! notwithstanding). i bet somebody will actually get there soon-ish.
posted by vogon_poet at 5:04 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


So now we know what Picasso was on, eh?
posted by valkane at 5:06 PM on April 23, 2018


Now I wonder what he expected the outcome to be. That's probably the most interesting and non ridiculous neural networky type output I've seen posted.
posted by bongo_x at 5:13 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Don’t know what I was expecting to see, but... these are really good.
If we plug in Showgirls does it return eXistenZ?
posted by q*ben at 5:15 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Most times sex on LSD goes fine, great even. And then that one time happens.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:27 PM on April 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Honestly, you stick some tiny feet and pouches in there and the AI is at least at Rob Liefeld levels of understanding human anatomy.
posted by um at 5:36 PM on April 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


If we plug in Showgirls does it return eXistenZ?

A Weird Science reboot directed by David Cronenberg
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 5:42 PM on April 23, 2018 [8 favorites]


Or Dinild Trimp?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:56 PM on April 23 [+] [!]


this needs a NSFL warning and a coupon for eye bleach
posted by AFABulous at 6:19 PM on April 23, 2018


Those look like perfectly fine Egon Schiele nudes to me.
posted by waving at 6:31 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think these are great. Some band is going to use one for their album cover.

He should open an Etsy shop. I want a t-shirt of one.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 6:33 PM on April 23, 2018


Now I wonder what he expected the outcome to be. That's probably the most interesting and non ridiculous neural networky type output I've seen posted.

Based on the results of GANs on other datasets, he probably hoped for serviceable paintings that looked reasonably like human nudes, but none of which were copies of the original paintings (or obvious recombinations of their parts).

GANs, when they work, work frighteningly well. Especially for human faces -- they can make up completely new, plausible looking people after learning from an existing dataset of headshots.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:07 PM on April 23, 2018


It's only a matter of time before humans are no longer required for pornography. Production, dissemination, and consumption all automated by artificial intelligence. Once the handover is complete, humanity will truly be unnecessary.

Well, only after we’ve trained a couple of AIs to be titillated by the results. And if Rule 34 remains applicable, that’s a lot of different AIs to train.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 7:32 PM on April 23, 2018


I assume those things are populating the 2nd ring of hell
posted by vorpal bunny at 7:37 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


I wonder what it would be like for an AI to take a prurient interest in humans. IIRC that was a minor theme in some of Iain Banks' books. Maybe this is actually a sort of foretaste of the frontiers of pornography.

Sort of covered by Fallout: New Vegas, too. One of the DLCs has the player going to a bombed out super science lab with a group of researchers who have uploaded their consciousnesses to brains in jars. 4 of the 5 scientists claim to hate bodies and all fleshy things, but one of the scientists still has an attachment to the human form. She uses the enslaved 'lobotomites' (zombie type creatures kept alive in hellish existence with survival suits) to create 'formography' where she admires rather banal parts of the human form. The player character can entice her if they're Charismatic enough to wriggle their nostrils at her.
posted by codacorolla at 7:41 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


They remind me of the opening credits sequence for Alien: Resurrection.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:25 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


Or Dinild Trimp?

JFC EmpressCallipygos, some of us just ate.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:29 PM on April 23, 2018


cf. Ambera Wellmann
posted by wreckingball at 10:22 PM on April 23, 2018 [2 favorites]


They should slip in a Geiger painting or two and see where that goes.
posted by boilermonster at 11:16 PM on April 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


It is clear that there will be no breakthrough in algorithmic porn generation until general Artificial Horniness has been developed.
posted by acb at 4:20 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


"Barrat's experiment did not go well."

that is a god damn lie
posted by XtinaS at 5:11 AM on April 24, 2018 [6 favorites]


no sir i don't like it
posted by poffin boffin at 7:43 AM on April 24, 2018


Dinild Trimp

That is the funniest fucking thing I have seen in a long time. Actual tears of laughter here.
posted by biogeo at 8:07 AM on April 24, 2018


Saying it didn't go well seems a bit rash.
posted by Flexagon at 11:24 AM on April 24, 2018


It's only a matter of time before humans are no longer required for pornography. Production, dissemination, and consumption all automated by artificial intelligence. Once the handover is complete, humanity will truly be unnecessary.

Sort of a hideous "Human[1] Centipede" of automated porn creation and consumption.

[1] No actual human included.
posted by theorique at 11:44 AM on April 24, 2018


No wonder the machines are going to kill us all if that's what they think we look like...
posted by KateViolet at 12:26 PM on April 24, 2018


It's obvious that those are naked shoggoths ...

Not Safe For Sanity
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:16 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


the uncanny Grand Canyon
posted by Sublimity at 5:49 PM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


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