A programmer recently turned to artificial intelligence to create positively charming images of so-called "botanical dinosaurs," representations of tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs, triceratops and others, all constructed entirely out of flowers. To generate the unusual effect, coder Chris Rodley used a web app that employs a technique known as style transfer, in which an algorithm "learns" a specific visual style and re-creates an image in that style. In this case, the algorithm re-created a selection of dinosaurs in the style of botanical illustrations, using all the visual elements that you'd expect to find in a field guide to local flora -- stems, leaves and blossoms in a variety of colors. Style transfer isn't new, but the unlikely pairing of dinosaurs and flowers was unusual and eye-catching enough to garner quite a bit of attention online. As of today (June 21), Rodley's June 15 tweet sharing the images has gathered over 32,000 likes and about 14,000 retweets.

Think machines can't be creative? This awesome use of artificial intelligence to make epic dinosaur art will make you question that assumption. Neural networks can do some awesome things, from allowing cars to drive on their own to instantly translating dozens of languages. But when it comes to our personal favorite use cases, we're going with one recently engineered by Australian artist Chris Rodley. By combining a deep-learning algorithm, a book of dinosaur pictures, and a book of flower paintings, he's created some of the trippiest images this side of an M.C. "The tech that makes this work isn't mine, but was created by a team of researchers from Germany who published a paper on it two years ago," Rodley told Digital Trends. "The idea of the group, led by Leon Gatys, was to transfer an art style as represented in a sample print to a target photograph.

Escher may have just lost its lucrative stranglehold on the dorm room poster market thanks to artist Chris Rodley, who used a deep learning algorithm to merge a book of dinosaurs with a book of flower paintings. The results are magnificent, and deserve a spot on the walls of our finest art galleries. This isn't the first time Rodley has dabbled with a deep learning A.I. to create art. Using a website called Deepart.io, which is powered by an algorithm developed by Leon Gatys and a team from the University of Tübingen in Germany, Rodley previously merged a Trump family photo and various Muppet characters, with nightmarish results. The Deepart.io algorithm differs from what Google's Deep Dream does by applying features of an artist's visual style to another image, preserving recognizable details and features and using them to rebuild the target image from scratch.

As Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader pulled out their light sabers for a deadly battle 30 years ago today, "Stars Wars" movie-goers asked themselves one thing: Where can I get one of those? The iconic movie series prompted young children to tote R2D2 lunch boxes and teenage boys to fall in love with side hair buns and gold bikinis. But in 1977, the groundbreaking fan favorite did more than just secure its place in Americana -- it also captured the hearts and minds of scientists of the '70s and a few younger, budding lab rats waiting in the wings. "I think the influence is huge," Michio Kaku, one of the world's most prominent physicists and the co-founder of string field theory, told ABCNEWS.com. "Many people don't realize that science fiction has been an inspiration for the world's leading scientists."