Artificial Intelligence (AI) has found a new expression in the art of Dutch photographer and digital designer Bas Uterwijk, who publishes faces "recreated" by machine learning technology from a software called Artbreeder. The operation of the application is simple to understand: it compiles all known information about a person - not only their physical facial structure, but also geographical and temporal information (place of birth and period of life, for example) - to create a figure that is more approximate than their technical conclusions can draw. Result is obvious: ultra-realistic figures with iconic names in history, such as the first president of the United States, George Washington, or even more contemporary and well-known celebrities, such as the rock star David Bowie, who died in January 2016. There is even Mike Ehrmantraut, a character lived by actor Johnathan Banks in the Breaking Bad series. Certainly, one figure that draws a lot of attention in Uterwijk's Instagram is the "picture" of Jesus Christ.

Have you ever wondered what famous historical figures like Nefertiti and Cleopatra looked like in real life? Well, Bas Uterwijk might be able to show you a pretty good guess. The Dutch photographer and digital artist creates amazing AI portraits of famous historical figures using innovative neural network reconstructions. To create these portraits, Uterwijk uploads numerous references of the person's likeness to the AI applications. Then, he makes small adjustments to the program until he is satisfied with the result.

Using artificial intelligence, Dutch photographer Bas Uterwijk released on Friday modern images of the Egyptian King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) and Queen Nefertiti. The pictures, which Uterwijk posted on his Twitter page, are based on old carvings and engravings that portrayed the two. The artist said in his post: "I don't claim to be a scientist. The historical portraits I make are based on artworks mostly made during the period of their subjects. With AI I filter out the sculpting styles of ancient portraiture and guide it to a credible outcome."

"The idea began when I discovered the A.I. had no problem fixing the marks and scratches on the only authenticated portrait of Billy the Kid I fed it. I then experimented with other historical figures of whom no or little photographic material existed: Napoleon, Julius Ceasar, Queen Elizabeth etc." Uterwijk uploaded up to 20 different paintings into the generative adversarial network and says he was able to reconstruct images that were visual averages of the different sources "with the help of this software that is trained on thousands of human faces, towards an almost photo-realistic version." "Getting a good likeness together with a certain level of realism and a strong appearance of the character can take hours or even days of tweaking," Uterwijk explained.

Is this artificial intelligence or a time machine? Bas Uterwijk, an Amsterdam-based artist, is using AI to create extremely lifelike photographs of historical figures and monuments such as the Statue of Liberty, artist Vincent van Gogh, George Washington and Queen Elizabeth I. Using a program called Artbreeder, which is described as "deep learning software," Uterwijk builds his photographs based on a compilation of portraits, reports the Daily Mail. The program pinpoints common facial features and photograph qualities to produce an image. "I try to guide the software to a credible outcome. I think of my work more as artistic interpretations than scientifically or historically accurate," the artist tells the outlet.