Deep fake

"DEEP FAKE" includes the work by Annette Markham, Samir Bhowmik & Jukka Hautamaki, Chris Combs, Derek Curry & Jennifer Gradecki, Dasul Kim, Eli Joteva & Provides Ng & Ya Nzi, Eric Anderson, Heather Lowe, Henry F. Brown, Ian Heisters, Janna Avner, Jeroen van Loon, Liliana Farber, Bruno Moreschi & Gabriel Pereira, Laine Rettmer & Isabel Beavers, and Tyler Bohm.

Panic Breeder (Samir Bhowmik & Jukka Hautamaki) presents a quasi-nature documentary of imaginary fantastical species as the future inhabitants of the Baltic Sea. Taking inspiration from the evolution of species theorized by Charles Darwin, it comments on the iterative and adversarial capabilities of ArtiPcial Intelligence to probe the terrifying future of the “survival of the fakest”. The artwork uses GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), a class of machine learning systems, where two neural networks (Generative & Discriminative) compete with each other for several training sessions. The trainings utilize a large dataset of extinct and endangered birds of the Baltic Sea to generate new images. The animation created from these fake images presents an illusory transformation and evolution of the species. Furthermore, by quantifying the energy consumption of machine learning, from among the machine-generated breeding a singular creature is manifested in physical form. In this Pctional scenario, the loss of species is counter-balanced by the possibilities of AI-generated creatures to act as a temporary, if not futile antidote to climate change panic and anxiety.