Charlotte Foster
Art

AI system sees beyond the frame of famous artworks

A new AI tool can provide a glimpse of what could potentially be going on beyond the frame of famous paintings, giving them a brand new life. 

OpenAI, a San Francisco-based company, has created a new tool called 'Outpainting' for its text-to-image AI system, DALL-E. 

Outpainting allows the system to imagine what's outside the frame of famous works such as Girl with The Pearl Earring, Mona Lisa and Dogs Playing Poker.

DALL-E relies on artificial neural networks (ANNs), which simulate the way the brain works in order to learn and create an image from text. 

Now with Outpainting, users must describe the extended visuals in text form for DALL-E to “paint” the newly imagined artwork. 

Outpainting, which is primarily aimed for professionals who work with images, will let users 'extend their creativity' and 'tell a bigger story', according to OpenAI. 

US artist August Kamp used Outpainting to reimagine the famous 1665 painting Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, extending the background in the original style. 

The results show the iconic subject in a domestic setting, surrounded by crockery, houseplants, fruit, boxes and more.

Other Outpainting attempts took a more creative turn, with one showing the Mona Lisa surrounded by a dystopian wasteland, and a version of A Friend In Need showing an additional table of gambling canines.

DALL-E is available to more than one million people to create AI-generated images, all with a series of text prompts. 

DALL-E is just one of many AI systems infiltrating the art world, joining the likes of Midjourney and Imagen redefining how we create and appreciate art. 

Image credits: DALL-E - August Kamp

Tags:
art, artificial intelligence, famous paintings, DALL-E