The latest AI project from the MIT Media Lab is demonstrating just how terrifying the prospects of deep learning can go. Welcome to the Nightmare Machine: an algorithm that has been trained to generate horrifying images. It is attempting to find the scariest faces and locations possible, and gets humans to tell it which are the worst. The first aspect of the project, Haunted Faces, is truly terrifying. The team behind the project, led by Iyad Rahwan, associate professor at MIT Media Lab, used deep learning to generate new faces, before dropping "a hint of scariness" onto the generated faces in the spirit of Halloween.

For centuries, across geographies, religions, and cultures, people have tried to innovate ways of scaring one other. Creating a visceral emotion such as fear remains one of the cornerstones of human creativity. This challenge is especially important in a time in which we wonder what the limits of Artificial Intelligence are: can machines learn to scare us? In Halloween 2016, we presented the Nightmare Machine: AI-generated scary imagery, where we collected over 2 million votes from people all over the world. Nightmare Machine is among the first AI projects that tackles a specific challenge: can AI not only detect but induce extreme emotions (such as fear) in humans?

"I wake up in a pool of blood." "I was trapped in this hospital bed." "I think I'm being stalked." In horror stories, phrases like these conjure up scenes that can make your blood run cold or cause your heart to beat a little faster. But the author of these words has no heartbeat, nor any blood to chill. Meet "Shelley," a neural network raised on a diet of horror fiction.

You've likely heard the horror stories about artificially intelligent beings – but now, you can read the tales penned by one. A team of MIT researchers has unveiled an AI horror writer, Shelley, named for the famed Frankenstein author. After training on scary stories collected from Reddit, Shelley can now generate her own nightmare-inducing creations, and even collaborate with humans in effort to write the world's first AI-human horror anthology. You've likely heard the horror stories about artificially intelligent beings – but now, you can read the tales penned by one. A team of MIT researchers has unveiled an AI horror writer, Shelley, named for the famed Frankenstein author.

The terrifying faces may look like creatures from a horror movie, but these digital images were actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Pix2pix project has unleashed a new tool that analyzes portraits and fills them in with colors and textures using a technique called generative adversarial networks (GANs). During the process, the system determines if its result match the sketch and will keep repeating the generation process until its own passes as'real' – regardless of how nightmarish the results may look. The terrifying faces may look like creatures from a horror movie, but these digital images were actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Users are presented with an input box and an output box and are prompted to draw a face in input, select process and in seconds, the AI will reveal its version of the sketch.

The terrifying faces may look like creatures from a horror movie, but these digital images were actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Pix2pix project has unleashed a new tool that analyzes portraits and fills them in with colors and textures using a technique called generative adversarial networks (GANs). During the process, the system determines if its result match the sketch and will keep repeating the generation process until its own passes as'real' – regardless of how nightmarish the results may look. The terrifying faces may look like creatures from a horror movie, but these digital images were actually generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Users are presented with an input box and an output box and are prompted to draw a face in input, select process and in seconds, the AI will reveal its version of the sketch.

Researchers are breaking down the barrier between people and machines by teaching computers to recognize fear. On the 4th floor of the pristine Media Lab Complex at MIT lives a Nightmare Machine. These computers earned that nickname for a reason: they have been learning how to terrify people. A series of algorithms generates disturbing and grotesque images, like movie monsters, dead people, and other things that go bump in the night. "We wanted to playfully explore how artificial intelligence (AI) can become a demon that learns how to scare you," said Pinar Yanardag Delul, one of the creators of the gore-loving computer program.

Researchers have seen hundreds of children's books through the eyes of an AI – and it was a nightmare. The team trained a deep learning algorithm to recognize illustrations by feeding it a data set of 6,468 pages from 223 books, by 24 artist. Once the AI had learned the characteristics of a specific artist, it transferred them to a new image that is sure to give children night terrors – it lit a smiling turtle on fire, engulfed a girl in flames and turned a snow covered scene bottom into an image of the apocalypse. Researchers aimed to teach a deep deep learning algorithm to recognize patterns and used children's books illustrations. The team fed the AI a data set of 6,468 pages from 223 books, by 24 artist.

Google has brought the late artist Bob Ross back to life, but as a monster-faced figure in a'nightmare' world. An engineer filtered an episode of Ross's PBS television show'The Joy of Painting' through the artificial neural network DeepDream, which can'see' objects and animals that are not really there. The video shows a segment with Ross painting his iconic happy trees, but instead of seeing fluffy green bushels, viewers are presented with bug-eyed creatures on the canvas. Google has brought the late artist Bob Ross back to life, but as a monster-faced figure in a'nightmare' world. An engineer filtered an episode of Ross's PBS television show'The Joy of Painting' through the artificial neural network DeepDream, which can'see' objects and animals that are not really there The latest DeepDream project was created by Alexander Reben, who is an artist an engineer.

Rest assured that despite the constant Matrix-like scenarios, we're actually big fans of AI technology. But we're also sci-fi geeks, so we have to get it out somewhere. Earlier this year, I wrote about the basics of how machine learning works, and how we've been using it to train computer programs to beat us at the Chinese strategy game, Go. You'd think that teaching a computer how to think strategically and crush their opponents beneath their cybernetic heel would be enough for researchers, but they've decided to raise the bar again. Now, they want to teach computers just what it is that humans fear.