NVIDIA got the world talking in December 2018 after showing off a new AI that can create ultra-realistic photos of people who don’t actually exist. Friends is playing with this massive amount of AI-generated ultra-realistic photos and offers a novel and fascinating way of experimenting with machine learning and automated AI-generated content that is not limited to face generation.

Using a mobile phone or tablet, countless faces constantly looking at the me, observe me from all directions. These rather ordinary looking portraits, they’re all fake. Not in the sense that they were Photoshopped, but rather they were completely generated by artificial intelligence. None of these people actually exist.

The project looks at the idea of rigged systems from different points of view, from turning the profiling and modelling tools back toward the platforms that enable them, through the potential to disrupt the world of photography, to the field of surveillance – here AI is literally monitoring us and ethics related to technology.

Countless portrait images are randomly integrated into the app via http requests. They all watch me constantly. Each portrait receives a random first and last name, three letters each. The animations and sounds follow the movements of the user: the virtual environment rotates when the user rotate the device. The sky appears when the device is moved upwards. By tilting the device downwards, the floor appears. The virtual environment is endless and can be navigated in every direction.
The sound is composed for the app and reacts responsive to all these movements and navigation speeds.
The Mobile App display can be projected on one or more walls in the exhibition space.

CREDITS
Marc Lee and Shervin Saremi (Sound)

WEBSITE
http://marclee.io/en/friends/