AI-powered robo-painters are getting somewhat better at ripping off masterpieces, judging by the following fresh research. A team of academics at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Princeton University in America, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, have crafted a new system dubbed RePrint. It's split into two parts: a 3D printer that outputs layers of resin ink, and a trained neural network. When shown a photo of an oil painting, the system identifies the overall layout of the image, adjusts the lighting to compensate for whatever conditions the input picture was taken, and then predicts which colours are the right ones to mix and how to apply them to recreate the work using the printer. The key thing here is to mechanically produce a painting based on a digital snap, mixing and daubing the inks as necessary, imperfections and all.

The strange, creepy world of "deepfakes," videos (often explicit) with the faces of the subjects replaced by those of celebrities, set off alarm bells just about everywhere early this year. And in case you thought that sort of thing had gone away because people found it unethical or unconvincing, the practice is back with the highly convincing "Deep Video Portraits," which refines and improves the technique. To be clear, I don't want to conflate this interesting research with the loathsome practice of putting celebrity faces on adult film star bodies. But this application of technology is clearly here to stay and it's only going to get better -- so we had best keep pace with it so we don't get taken by surprise. Deep Video Portraits is the title of a paper submitted for consideration this August at SIGGRAPH; it describes an improved technique for reproducing the motions, facial expressions, and speech movements of one person using the face of another.