Group Members:
Abbey Reese, Alexandra Slabakis, Kimberly June Blacutt, and Vincent Wolfe
Some of our cool scans!
Author: Abigail Reese
Looking Outwards #2-Black Box Camera
The Black Box Camera, created by Jasper van Loenen, uses artificial intelligence to generate a physical print of a subject based on its own interpretation. The user points the camera at a subject, presses a button, and the internal system analyzes the photo, creates a caption, and uses that to generate a unique image, which is then printed. This project’s use of AI with direct, real-time interaction with environments is what I find so inspiring. What I think the creators got right here capturing the mystery of AI interpretation of visuals of real environments and in real-time. I think the creators could take it a step further by giving users more creative liberty in how the AI is used to generated a new image, allowing ‘AI photographers’ to exist in the same way that we see ‘AI artists’ emerging. I also think it could be cool to make a similar technology that had a more specific transformation step, i.e. used the AI to enhance the image in a specific way rather than a general recreation of the photo. The image produced is limited by the descriptive text that is generated, why go from image -> text -> image when you can go straight from image -> image?
Related Technologies: Internally the Black Box Camera uses Raspberry Pi with a camera module to take a photo when the user presses the button. The photo is then analyzed and a caption is generated, which is used as the input prompt for Dall-e. The resulting image then gets printed by the internal Instax portable photo printer, for which the bluetooth protocol was reverse engineered to control it from custom software.
Looking Outwards #1-Paragraphica
Paragraphica is an innovative camera that utilizes AI and location data to generate a photographic representation of a place and moment based on descriptive text. It gathers data such as the address, weather, and nearby places to create a paragraph that encapsulates the current environment, which is then converted into a unique image using a text-to-image API. The camera includes dials that allow users to control the radius of data collection, the noise in the AI’s image generation, and how closely the image follows the descriptive paragraph. This project’s use of AI with direct, real-time interaction with environments is what I find so inspiring. What I think the creators got right here is there ability to capture and enhance the visuals of real environments and in real-time. I think the creators could take it a step further by allows users to adjust the descriptive text that is used to generate the image, it would be even cooler if you gave the user liberty to image their space in a new way, in real-time. I also think it could be cool to make a similar technology that had a more specific transformation step, i.e. used the AI to enhance the image in a specific way rather than a general recreation of the photo. The image produced is limited by the descriptive text that is generated.
Related Technologies: Paragraphica was created with Raspberry Pi 4, 15-inch touchscreen, 3D printed housing, custom electronics and using Noodl, python and Stable Diffusion API.
