Artificial Dreams: Surreal Visual Story Generation | Los Angeles, CA
Symposium Presentation on Computational Visual Storytelling as Inquiry into AI "Hallucination" at USC Institute for Creative Technologies
I recently presented my latest work in progress on generating surreal visual stories with artificial intelligence (AI) at the University of Southern California (USC) Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, CA. This work spans designing an algorithm inspired by cinematic surrealism to generate 100 “artificial dreams.” By drawing upon the dream logic in surreal filmmaker David Lynch’s 2001 film Mulholland Drive, we design an algorithm to generate surreal visual stories (stories derived from visuals). Through this experimentation, we probe AI “hallucination”—the tendency of AI to make up things (in our case, narrative elements that are not grounded in the system inputs)—as a potential source of creativity, but also harm. In particular, we generate visual stories about zebras as a relatively lighthearted and playful subject matter for exploring the more heavy and serious consequences of AI “hallucination.” Stay tuned for future updates on what we find from closely reading these artificial dreams, as well as our forthcoming recommendations on how to design computational visual storytelling systems that get AI “hallucination” under control.
Below is a sample artificial dream from our collection of 100 surreal visual stories.
The Time for Vacation Had Come
The reason I came to the zoo was to fall madly and fatally in love with a zebra. Love at first sight, so to speak. It was my dream come true, and it would be much less fun if no one else saw my love blossom. So I made sure to get as close as I could without getting caught, and when they finally allowed me into the zebra enclosure, I was smitten.
