Researchers at Google have developed a new AI tool called Chimera Painter that turns doodles into unusual creatures. This tool uses machine learning to create representation based on the user's rough sketches. Before this, Nvidia has used a similar concept with landscapes, and MIT and IBM have produced a similar idea with buildings. A high level of technical knowledge and artistic creativity is required to create art for digital video games. Game artists need to promptly iterate on ideas and develop many assets to meet tight deadlines.

A GAN is a machine learning model in which two convolutional neural networks compete with each other to become more accurate in their predictions. For Chimera Painter, one network created new images, and the other network tried to determine if the pictures were from a sample training data set, which featured artist-created images. The outlines characterized the shape and size of the creature and separated out each identifiable body part, including the legs, eyes, ears, head, muzzle, horns and wings. After training the model, it was then used to produce multi-species chimeras based on those outlines, according to Google. Researchers put the best model into Chimera Painter.