How machine learning is bringing National Library of Scotland's maps to life

What if machine learning meant that you didn't have to have a definitive starting point and the reams of records in the archives could be explored and enjoyed visually? That is the vision of Martin Disley who has been creating datasets from across the National Library of Scotland's (NLS) map collection. His project, which is part of the Creative Informatics Resident Entrepreneur project at the University of Edinburgh, curated datasets of images previously scanned by the NLS to feed a machine learning model.The newly-created machine learning model then creates'fake' versions of the images that it is trained upon. The generated output from this process can be animated to produce visions of machines dreaming, in this case the fake maps animated and brought to life. This has the effect of synthesising these large collections down in short videos.