Supercharging Style Transfer
Notice how the transferred images have none of the power of the originals.<p>Take the first set of images, in the style of “Head of a Clown”, by Georges Rouault. Not only does it not recreate the brush-strokes, but the content of the restyled image doesn't fit the artist's style.<p>In the case of Munch's The Scream, and Starry Night, and every Monet, the subject matter is as important as the image. Maybe you'll be able to mask your Facebook profile in a combination of Murakami and Pissaro, but that's not the extent of their genius.<p>Similar things are attempted in music. While we can pretty programmatically formulate pop music, deeper meaning eludes machines. Bob Dylan didn't just write great lyrics, he tapped into the zeitgeist of the era in which he wrote. When Kendrick Lamar or Beyonce write about black struggle in America, that's in the context of a larger societal conversation.<p>I don't believe that neural networks will ever be artists because they work on copying existing patterns. Until there is an element of randomness fueled by context, they aren't creating anything new. That's where genius lies.