Check our Lewis Hackett's well-trained AI, blasting out unnervingly on-topic and on-style deepfake sci-fi paperbacks.
Peter Kirn:
The way a lot of press gets this wrong, of course, is to say things like "the AI made some sci-fi book covers." Even as these algorithms get a lot more sophisticated than averaged pixels or a Markov chain, they are still just algorithms, lacking in agency, albeit with enormous data sets as source material. In turn, though, that makes some of the aesthetic peculiarities they generate all the more interesting, and means that it's helpful to understand them as generative tools in the hands of artists. They're the outcome of a lot of human effort in mathematics, code, and ultimately human choice, even if that last bit upsets those in search of general artificial intelligence.
I like how the AI learns old book creases but not how they work—a good example of the wonder and limitations of this technology.
