What happens when Google puts PCs on acid

Deep Dream Fear and Loathing

Google's code for its Deep Dream neural network system already looked like the search giant had fed acid to one of its computers, but after unleashing the code to the greater public someone decided to apply the filter to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

As if that movie didn't already have a strong enough cocktail of drugs coursing through its frames, the two minute clip uploaded by the GitHub user graphific adds a whole other trippy dimension to this contemporary classic.

If that's not enough, just search a social media site for #deepdream to see what Google's image processing systems can do to everything from an interstellar landscape to a self portrait.

How are these computer images generated?

Last month Google posted on its blog some images that demonstrate the progress the company is making with AI neural networks in mimicking the visual learning processes of the human brain.

Part of Google's explanation of the underlying processes involved showing what happens when specific systems are enhanced to full capacity, resulting in distorted images that look like the effects of a potent dose of LSD.

The images were popular enough for Google to issue an abridged code pulled from one of its Artificial Neural Networks so that the greater public could distort images of their own.

Joel Burgess
Staff Writer

Joel has been the in-house benchmark monkey for the Australian TechRadar team and Australia’s two biggest tech magazines (APC and TechLife) since 2014.