According to the report, a new algorithm called BigGAN can create detailed and quite realistic photos from scratch. "BigGAN, the last three letters of which stand for generative adversarial network. This kind of neural net is composed of two models: one that conjures random images out of random numbers, and one that compares these generated images to real images and tells the generator just how far off it is. GANs are common in machine learning research, and BigGAN isn't that different from other algorithms out there. But there is one big difference: BigGAN throws a ton of computational power, courtesy of Google, at the problem."

Over the weekend, a Google intern and two researchers from Google's DeepMind division released a paper, currently under review for a 2019 conference, featuring AI-generated images that blow everything else out of the water. Based on the small thumbnails, it's almost impossible to tell that they're not real images: There's a chestnut-colored dog with his tongue hanging out, a beautiful ocean vista, a monarch butterfly, and a juicy hamburger complete with melted cheese and a bun that looks like it was brushed with butter. The textures of the images, from the dog's fur to the hamburger's juices, are incredibly realistic, with careful study revealing only tiniest of tells that the image isn't a real one. The research is making waves in the research community, where some expressed shock at the image quality. Oriol Vinyals, a research scientist at DeepMind, wondered if the images were the "best GAN samples ever." "I want to live in a #BIGGAN generated world!" wrote Meltem Atay, a neurotechnology PhD student who focuses on machine learning.