Help This Computer Program Draw the World’s Freakiest Felines
This is what happens when you tell an AI bot that everything is cats.
Okay total creepy uncanny valley time but #breadcat #edges2cats pic.twitter.com/i3ALRn9yFD
— Ivy Tsai (@ivymyt) February 21, 2017
For years, computers have provided humans with an endless supply of depictions of cats—cat pictures, cat gifs, cat videos, cat memes. If you really think about it, it’s only fair that they should get a shot at creating them themselves. Enter edges2cats, a program that takes your squiggles and turns ‘em into cats. Or, at least, tries:
‘bout as normal as I can draw in that #edges2cats thing pic.twitter.com/ZX3y0kHAHp
— SeanWolf (@SeanWolfPhillip) February 22, 2017
#edges2cats actually impressed by how well it handled this one! pic.twitter.com/4dsWXqNUoH
— Rob Thomson (@treborguy) February 22, 2017
Edges2cats is the brainkitten of programmer Christopher Hesse, who released it a few days ago, along with similar programs “edges2shoes” and “edges2handbags.” (Those two are slightly less disturbing.) All of them use what is called “image-to-image translation,” in which an AI is trained to transform a simple image—like lines and circles—into a more complicated one, with colors and textures.
#edges2cats is transcendent pic.twitter.com/n5sq28q8FP
— Curbles (@curbles) February 22, 2017
#edges2cats HELP pic.twitter.com/W6Hqx9AbJ7
— Wonder Eggplant #132 (@Wonder_Eggplant) February 22, 2017
This is fairly similar to Google’s infamous image recognition network, which is learning to identify everyday objects by looking at tons and tons of labeled pictures. Instead of enjoying exposure to a lot of different images, though, edges2cats has only ever seen Shutterstock photos of cats. Because of that, it thinks everything is meant to be a cat—even a random scribble—and generously helps it along.
Dear God.#edges2cats pic.twitter.com/4UpmSelqoN
— TheDaggestOfNabbits (@DaggestNabbits) February 22, 2017
Okay, I’ll stop now #edges2catshttps://t.co/Of1wYXDx6Z pic.twitter.com/c58QfSlRjv
— Tommy Leung (@The_Episiarch) February 22, 2017
Despite edges2cats’s obvious utility, it is not for everything. When Atlas Obscura tried to transform our logo, it didn’t go so hot:
If you want to try your luck, you can find this nightmare cat generator here: https://affinelayer.com/pixsrv/. Have fun, and be careful.
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