Microsoft's Latest AI Creation Reveals Just How Much Computers Can Imagine

Ever since computer scientist Alan Turing first proposed his famous test of machine intelligence in 1950, the question of what it means for a computer to think has revolved around one basic question: Can it imitate a human's own thinking so closely that nobody can tell the difference? At first glance, the imitation going on with the latest A.I. creation from Microsoft's Deep Learning Technology Center is of cameras, not the human mind. The bot works to create photorealistic images -- in this case, mostly of birds -- using nothing but text descriptions and a huge repository of similar photographs to draw on. The bird pictured up top is real. The one below is not.