Video shows artificial neural network transforming images in real time

O Google revealed this month the Deep Dream, the “dreamer” robot. It is basically an artificial neural network capable of transforming images in various ways. Acting on some specific aspects of a photograph, the network distort the elements and turns it into something completely different.

The company released the code of the neural network and anyone can upload a photo and watch it transform. the developer Johan Nordberg decided to play around with the tool a bit and created a video that takes us to “a journey through all layers of an artificial neural network.”

Starting with random noise, each frame of the video passes through the Deep Dream, which recognizes and reinforces details such as edges or shapes. In this way, we can see the network transforming images in real time.

As with most of the transformed images that have been published in the last few weeks, the video is full of things Weird. The experience gets even more fun, or frightening, when you pause the video every now and then.

Several other images created with the neural network can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google+, a search with #DeepDream returns very interesting results. Whoever wants to create needs to have access to some programming software, the instructions are in this google post.