Neural Network Taught to Paint Presidents Like Picasso

Hey, what's widely admired ex-Linden inventor Karl Stiefvater doing lately? Glad you asked: Teaching a neural network how to paint US Presidents like Picasso, and that from all Picasso's periods (blue, cubistic, and so on). Specifically, via Google's neural network, an algorithm, and code from Kai Sheng Tai, which Karl's all powering with the Amazon cloud.

See the full roster of POTUS by Picasso here, with Cubistic Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson my personal favorites. (President Obama is painted alarmingly white, which I guess means the neural network is totally racist.)

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Comments

[qarl]

thanks for the nod, Hamlet.

yeah, i spent a couple days trying to get a good Obama. i wanted to use one of Picasso's last works... but none of them worked well with the algorithm. (i guess his surreal stuff is too surreal.)

in the end, i had to chose between a boring image and a provocative image.

so i pretended that i'm a real artist and went with the one that'd get the most attention.

[Iggy]

As a Virginia alum, I must say that Qarl's Blue Period portrait of Thomas Jefferson is unlike anything I've seen of "TJ." Heavens knows anyone from UVA has seen Jefferson's image on everything from buildings to drink-coasters.