Last month, Google blew the lid off of a trippy psychedelic image of a squirrel that had the internet confused: Had the strange images of dogs and noses been designed by a human, or a computer? It turned out that it had, indeed, been created as part of Inceptionism, a project that showcases images generated by the company's image recognition algorithm. Androids, it was declared, do dream of electric sheep. Google released an open-sourced version of the neural network learning algorithm on July 1, dubbed DeepDream, and the internet has spent the last week going wild with it. Programmer Zain Shah created a simple interface for applying the algorithm to a jpeg, and now, warped, psychedelic remixes of the Doof Warrior, Johnny Depp, Jackson Pollock's No. 5, and a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are out, covered in puppyslugs and disembodied eyes, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Artists like Memo Akten and KyttenJanae are already incorporating the algorithm into their practices, and a DeepDreams Twitter bot has appeared, courtesy of Japan's Psychic VR Lab. With these tools, you, too, can produce your own deepdreamed videos, GIFs, images, video games, and more, which has the double-positive of finding crazy patterns in your own face and giving researchers more material to learn about how machines learn. Check out a few of our favorites below.
by recognising forms in #deepdream, your mind has already become entangled with the system https://t.co/0BdtktDChR pic.twitter.com/qKC4g5Comz
— Memo Akten (@memotv) July 4, 2015
#deepdream http://t.co/N4nHUHLQuE
— Некстджен и Усиление (@turbojedi) July 3, 2015
Selfridges, Birmingham #deepdream pic.twitter.com/QpS6Rx6JBw
— Pete Ashton (@peteashton) July 6, 2015
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD #deepdream pic.twitter.com/8P6ZYf5Dab
— ゴッドスコーピオン (@GoddoSukoupion) July 4, 2015
Puppyslug all the way down. #deepdream pic.twitter.com/Dro7ErdYdw
— Devine Lu Linvega (@aliceffekt) July 2, 2015
Ok, folks: The code from our #inceptionism neural network post is now on github: https://t.co/pESzdoDfh4 pic.twitter.com/NI99JYsMhr
— Mike Tyka (@mtyka) July 1, 2015
Awesome combination of #deepdream and waifu2x http://t.co/4lq33gZDkq I love all the remixes coming out! pic.twitter.com/u7adVUXKxG
— Mike Tyka (@mtyka) July 2, 2015
Dogs Playing Poker #inceptionism #deepdream pic.twitter.com/ur6cHWRmNB
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 4, 2015
Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948 #inceptionism #deepdream pic.twitter.com/dwQ9ahpcxK
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 4, 2015
Apollo 11 #deepdream #inceptionism pic.twitter.com/Ft8RumQQjf
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 3, 2015
Rorschach Blots 9-10 #inceptionism #deepdream pic.twitter.com/T3BdyfkFa4
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 5, 2015
#Inceptionism and the Windows XP background image #deepdream pic.twitter.com/l8SLzCBXzx
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 2, 2015
Inceptionism is fun - thanks, @googleresearch! More here: http://t.co/K48WCr0BNl #deepdream pic.twitter.com/DAVndOQFxd
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 2, 2015
Twenty Dollars #deepdream #inceptionism pic.twitter.com/8KDNpH7zwW
— Brad Skaggs (@brdskggs) July 3, 2015
Before #deepdream 'it' was a sheep. pic.twitter.com/8s5nhVXQid
— Pavel Bazin (@pavelbazin) July 2, 2015
For more deep dream artwork, check out the hashtag #deepdream on Twitter. Make your own with the Deep Dream Twitter bot.
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