Computer artist Glenn Marshall recently developed one of my favorite techniques yet: a text-to-image generator that transforms any picture into the style of famous artists. The system morphs an input image towards the suggestion of a text prompt, such as “Salvador Dalí Art.” Over repeated mutations and iterations of each frame, the AI gradually finds features and shapes that match the text description until it produces a final composition. [Read: How to use AI to better serve your customers] Marshall named the technique Chimera, after the mythical beast formed from various animal parts, which has become a byword for something that exists only in the imagination and isn’t possible in reality. Marshall says the technique is closer to “style distortion” than style transfer. But would the artists he’s distorting appreciate his creations?
