Enabling the 'imagination' of artificial intelligence

Now, imagine the same cat, but with coal-black fur. Now, imagine the cat strutting along the Great Wall of China. Doing this, a quick series of neuron activations in your brain will come up with variations of the picture presented, based on your previous knowledge of the world. As humans, it's easy to envision an object with different attributes. But, despite advances in deep neural networks that match or surpass human performance in certain tasks, computers still struggle with the very human skill of "imagination."