Last week I attempted to illustrate some neural net-generated racehorses by turning to another neural net - this time, one that generates images, called BigGAN.
Using Joel Simonâs ganbreeder.app interface, Iâm able to see what BigGAN can generate for any of ~1000 categories of objects. Not finding a category for âracehorseâ, I decided to use the nearest thing I could find, âhorse cartâ. Which, um.
But ganbreeder makes it easy to combine multiple categories - if âhorse cartâ is one point in space and âgreat grey owlâ is another point in space, when you travel on a straight line between them, the horse carts gradually grow feathers and owl faces, ending in something that sort of resembles an owl.
Ganbreeder also allows you to travel AWAY from a destination. So I can start at âhorse cartâ and then try to remove some of the cartness by deliberately traveling in the exact opposite direction of âshopping cartâ. Sure enough, the image morphs into a furry four-legged creature with no more sign of wheels.
[left: 100% horse cart. right: 75% horse cart and -75% shopping cart. bottom: tried to make the face less doglike by also subtracting some dog. success??]
What this also means is that I can take any category of thing and generate its opposite. For example, I can set âguacamoleâ to -100%, inverting every component that makes it up. Itâs kind of like burrowing directly through the earthâs core to find out whatâs on the exact opposite side of the planet.
Hereâs whatâs opposite of guacamole: this tower, this mysterious cloaked figure.
this thing, I regret to inform you, is the opposite of âjeansâ
Now, this is just a single neural netâs strange idea of what an opposite is, basically âdo exactly the opposite of what you would do to generate a picture of jeansâ. If they retrained the neural net on the same data, random fluctuations in the training process might make the opposites look a lot different. But often the opposites have a sort of logic to them. The opposite of tiny indoor things tend to be large landscapes. The opposite of organic things tend to be geometric ones.Â
Hereâs the opposite of âstingrayâ:
The opposite of âbirdhouseâ is, rather pleasingly, some kind of cat.
The opposite of âdrilling platformâ is this leafy green creature.
And the opposite of âeggnogâ is a terrifying sight to behold.
You can make your own abominations and opposites with ganbreeder.app!
During the Victorian era, mourners sometimes collected their tears in gold decorated âtear bottlesâ to keep as a remembrance for the next of kin. It has also been said that the widows would go to the grave on the anniversary of the first year of death and sprinkle the tears on the grave to signify the end of the first year of mourning.
