Augmenting Art: Could IBM's Machine Learning Bring Back Gaudi And DaVinci?

Here's something to think about – if machine learning is about teaching a computer to think like humans do, can they be taught to think like a specific person? And if they can think like a great artist, could they also create art like one? To test this idea, IBM's cognitive computing engine Watson has been tasked with trying to think like Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan modernist whose fusion of organic and orient-inspired architecture permeates his home city of Barcelona. There, during the Mobile World Congress conference taking place at the moment, a team of designers from New York agency SOFTLab will create a sculpture, "informed" by Watson. In preparation the IBM machine learning system was fed hundreds of images of Gaudi's work, as well as images related to Barcelona and its culture.