What the heck is AI Generative Art?

What the heck is AI Generative Art?

The simplest explanation I can think of is you train a computer to recognize images and then ask it to combine those images into a new image based on either random noise (think snow on a TV) or a base image.  For example, you train the computer (machine learning algorithm) on thousands of cat pictures.  Then you train it to recognize what a robot looks like.  Once you have that done, you ask it to create a "robot cat" an it will blend the two ideas into a new, original image. 

For the more technical version, here is an excerpt from an Adafruit Learning Article:

GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) are systems where two neural networks are pitted against one another: a generator which synthesizes images or data, and a discriminator which scores how plausible the results are. The system feeds back on itself to incrementally improve its score.

A lot of coverage has been on the unsettling and dystopian applications of GANs — deepfake videos, nonexistent but believable faces, poorly trained datasets that inadvertently encode racism — but they also have benign uses: upscaling low-resolution imagery, stylizing photographs, and repairing damaged artworks (even speculating on entire lost sections in masterpieces).

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