A deep learning system that can apply an existing style to a new image is one thing, but can an AI actually generate a new artistic style? These researchers (an assorted group including people from Rutgers and Facebook) and have experimented with using generative adversarial networks to create artwork that is recognized by another neural network as artwork, but doesn't seem to come from any existing style. Personally I like the clouds on the upper right the best, but there are interesting things going on in all the images-- I like how it uses color gradients in particular. It's an interesting new advance, but to feel like art I think one thing this lacks is a motivation for choosing a particular subject. I would like to see a system that makes aesthetic choices in the goal of expressing an idea about the world that comes from having experienced and thought about the world.
The following images generated by the adversarial system were judged by human subjects the most highly in their respective categories (click to enlarge):
Link to the paper
