From ‘Gandalf the Good Witch’ and ‘Vampire Big Bird’ to 'The Shark Knight' and ‘Sexy the Spock’: Neural network invents hilarious Halloween costumes

  • Researcher trained a neural network on 4,500 crowdsourced submissions
  • Included classic costumes, such as witch or vampire, and 'sexy' interpretations 
  • The type of AI did not understand word meanings, leading to hilarious results

If you raise an eyebrow at the many questionable Halloween costumes currently on the market, just be thankful your outfit wasn’t designed by an AI.

Colorado-based research scientist Janelle Shane has trained a neural network to invent costumes based a dataset set of more than 4,500 crowdsourced submissions, ranging from the classics to the countless ‘sexy’ interpretations available today.

In the experiment, Shane used a type of neural network that learns words without understanding their meaning – resulting in a hilarious assortment of made-up characters, from Aldonald the Goddess of the Chicken to Gandalf the Good Witch.

Colorado-based research scientist Janelle Shane has trained a neural network to invent costumes based a dataset set of more than 4,500 crowdsourced submissions, resulting in a hilarious assortment of made-up characters. Stock image

Colorado-based research scientist Janelle Shane has trained a neural network to invent costumes based a dataset set of more than 4,500 crowdsourced submissions, resulting in a hilarious assortment of made-up characters. Stock image

HOW SHE DID IT 

While some neural networks are able to learn the meaning of words, the AI used in Shane’s recent experiment did not have such understanding.

Instead, it ‘learns words from scratch, letter by letter, with no knowledge of their meaning.’

The researcher fed the neural network 4,500 costume names, and then left the AI to its own devices.

Early on, the costumes churned out by the neural network were hilariously nonsensical.

And the early trials reflect the frequency of certain words appearing in the training set, the researcher explained– notably, the word sexy.

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In a new blog post, the researcher explains that the Halloween classics were the most popular costumes in the training submissions.

This included witches, ghosts, pirates, Batmans, cats (including sexy cats), vampires, pumpkins, and sexy nurses.

And, there were roughly 300 costumes that contained ‘sexy’ in the name, including a slew of bizarre concepts, such as ‘sexy poop emoji,’ ‘sexy eyeball,’ and ‘sexy Ben Franklin.’

The set also contained those considered to be a ‘technical challenge,’ such as Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Given the creativity of humans, Shane explains in the blog post, this task was going to be tricky for a neural network.’

Instead of taking the ‘sensible approach,’ and using a neural network that knows the meaning of the words its using, the creator opted for ‘something a bit weirder.’

‘So, I used a neural network that learns words from scratch, letter by letter, with no knowledge of their meaning, an open-source char-rnn neural network written in Torch.

‘I simply dumped the 4500 Halloween costumes on it, and told the neural network to figure it out.’

Instead of taking the ¿sensible approach,¿ and using a neural network that knows the meaning of the words its using, the creator opted for ¿something a bit weirder.¿ Some of the AI-made costumes are listed in Shane's tweet, above

Instead of taking the ‘sensible approach,’ and using a neural network that knows the meaning of the words its using, the creator opted for ‘something a bit weirder.’ Some of the AI-made costumes are listed in Shane's tweet, above

COSTUMES INVENTED BY AN AI 

lady Garbage

Pirate firefighter

Fairy Batman

Aldonald the Goddess of the Chicken

Celery Blue Frankenstein

Dancing Bellyfish

Dragon of Liberty

A shark princess

Statue of Witch

Cupcake pants

Bird Scientist

Giant Two butter

The Twin Spider Mermaid

The Game of Nightmare Lightbare

Share Bat

The Rocky Monster 

Mario lander

Spork Sand

Statue of pizza

The Spiding hood

A card Convention

Sailor Potter

Shower Witch

The Little Pond

Spice of pokeman

Bill of Liberty

A spock

Count Drunk Doll of Princess

Petty fairy

Pumpkin picard

Statue of the Spice of the underworker 

Sexy Scare

Sexy the Pumpkin

Saxy Pumpkins

Sexy the Pirate

Sexy Pumpkin Pirate

Sexy Gumb Man

Sexy barber

Sexy Gargles

Sexy humblebee

Sexy The Gate

Sexy Lamp

Sexy Ducty monster

Sexy conchpaper

Sexy the Bumble

Sexy the Super bass

Pretty zombie Space Suit

sexy Drangers

Sexy the Spock

Punk Tree

Disco Monster

Spartan Gandalf

Starfleet Shark

A masked box

Martian Devil

Panda Clam

Potato man

Shark Cow

Space Batman

The shark knight

Snape Scarecrow

Gandalf the Good Witch

Professor Panda

Strawberry shark

Vampire big bird

Samurai Angel

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Early on, the costumes churned out by the neural network were hilariously nonsensical, including ‘Sexy sexy Dombie Sexy Cat,’ ‘Sexy Cot,’ and simply, ‘Hot.’

The early trials especially reflect the frequency of certain words appearing in the training set, the researcher explained – notably, the word sexy.

Later trials produced a series of ‘astoundingly good’ mashups, with recognizable characters or objects combined to be one bizarre entity.

This includes ‘Vampire big bird,’ ‘Panda Clam,’ ‘The shark knight,’ and ‘Punk Tree.’

Later trials produced a series of ¿astoundingly good¿ mashups, with recognizable characters or objects combined to be one bizarre entity. One example was 'Gandalf the Good Witch'
Given the creativity of humans, Shane explains in the blog post, the task was going to be tricky for a neural network.¿ One costume it came up with was 'Sexy the Spock'

Later trials produced a series of ‘astoundingly good’ mashups, with recognizable characters or objects combined to be one bizarre entity. This includes 'Gandalf the Good Witch' (Gandalf is pictured left), and 'Sexy the Spock' (Spock pictured right)

The AI also generated a number of other random costumes, such as ‘The Twin Spider Mermaid,’ ‘Count Drunk Doll of Princess,’ and ‘The Spiding hood.’

And, of course, it churned out a batch of its own sexy costumes as well – though, as it’s immediately clear, it ‘never quite got the hang of it.’

Among the many ‘sexy’ costumes, the AI invented ‘Sexy Scare,’ ‘Sexy Lamp,’ ‘Sexy humblebee,’ and ‘Sexy the Spock.’

Shane has become known for her hilarious neural network experiments, training AI to come up with all sorts of ideas.

In the recent past, she’s trained AIs to invent trendy beer names, ‘serious-sounding diseases,’ and even Harry Potter spells. 

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