This month we take a closer look at two of Microsoft’s AI lab projects.
Embedded in a larger vision to “explore, learn, and code with the latest breakthrough AI innovations”, the Microsoft AI lab provides a very helpful overview of how diverse AI applications are being used in practice. All of those applications are divided into five categories: Innovation sandbox, Business scenarios, AI for Society, Autonomous systems and Security and responsibility. However, most of them showcase mainly an educational or technical purpose while we focus on those projects you can explore without coding in a way of interacting with – or how we call it – play with.
Tackling one of the big mysteries of the last century with the help of AI
So, let’s dive into two projects you can actually try out yourself, both using Cognitive Search, an AI-first approach for content understanding.
First one is called JFK Files and deals with the murder of John F. Kennedy and the following investigation and “takes complex files including photos, handwriting, government documents, and more — then uses Cognitive Search to extract information.” With over 34,000 related pages released in 2017 you can quickly imagine a dusty room full of files where it takes months to organize and make connections. Luckily (at least from a technological point of view) we don’t live in the 00s anymore, so it is now possible to pull “data from almost any data source and applies a set of composable cognitive skills which extract knowledge. This knowledge is then organized and stored in an index, enabling new experiences for exploring the data using Search.”
The chance for everyone to dig deeper or to simply play detective from home. For now, we just wait for some new (conspiracy) theories being thought about.
The visualized relevance between key words in a network shape.
Art from the 16th century + AI = ?
Our second Play this month is called Gen Studio and was collaboratively created in a Hackathon with members from the Met Museum, M.I.T. and Microsoft. In the context of a huge open access campaign in which much of the art from the Met Museum was photographed and made freely available on the internet, this particular project was also created to explore and visualize the spaces in between those pieces of art. With the goal to “imagine new ways for global audiences to discover, learn, and create with one of the world’s foremost art collections”, a Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) was created which is a specific class of machine learning frameworks. It now allows “users to explore dreamlike images”.
So, take a look between the spaces and create and download your own unique compositions of objects made by an AI.
What happens when you combine the shapes, colors and materials of a vase, a suit of armor and an antique teapot?
As you can see, NFT’s or even iNFT’s aren’t the only revolutionary thing right now when it comes to reinventions between arts, culture and technology.
Every month we present two new applications for our GEDANKENFABRIK AI Playground. Read the intros, visit our Playground and try them out yourself!
Related:
Time to Play: The AI Playground
How to play: First time experiences
AI-Plays of the month: Deep Nostalgia & AI Dungeon
AI-Plays of the month: Sythesia & Giorgio Cam
AI-Plays of the month: The Moral Machine & Interactive TV