Nightmare Machine, Existing Photos of Faces and Places Turned Scary Using Artificial Intelligence

Three scientists from the MIT Media Lab – Pinar Yanardag, Manuel Cebrian, Iyad Rahwan – have created the aptly-named Nightmare Machine, a computer generator that uses artificial intelligence to transform existing photos of faces and places into wonderfully scary images. Users also can teach the algorithm by voting on the fright level of certain images via a short survey.

Since centuries, across geographies, religions, and cultures people try to innovate ways of scaring each other. Creating a visceral emotion such a fear remains one of the cornerstones of human creativity. This challenge is especially important in a time where we wonder what the limits of Artificial Intelligence are: Can machines learn to scare us? Towards this goal, we present you Haunted Faces and Haunted Places: computer generated scary imagery powered by deep learning algorithms and evil spirits!

via Quartz

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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