Nvidia AI turns simple doodles into photorealistic landscapes

Nvidia's GauGAN turns doodles into lifelike landscapes. — AFP Relaxnews

Nvidia's latest AI-powered software GauGAN turns anyone who can create basic digital doodles into landscape artists.

Nvidia this week announced GauGAN, an interactive app that can convert "segmentation maps", aka doodles, into "photorealistic masterpieces".

The prototype software is quite simple; users, or rather artists, can select from a variety of different landscape themes from which they can use basic draw and fill tools to add trees, clouds, flowers, bushes, and a variety of other natural objects and textures.

Because the AI "knows how the real world looks" thanks to training conducted using a million images, when you add a tree, there will be a respective shadow on the ground automatically, and when you add water, it will reflect whatever object or texture is near it; blob doodles filled in with a rock texture don't just remain textured blobs, instead, GauGAN turns them into a boulders with realistic shadows appropriate to the rest of landscape.

Though GauGAN primarily draws natural elements with a few exceptions like roads, the technology behind the software is able to create more urban-style landscapes complete with buildings and even people.

Nvidia predicts that tools like these will benefit architects, urban planners, landscape designers, and game designers allowing them to quickly prototype ideas and see how they would look in the real world relatively realistically.

The application will be available for users to try at the GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley that runs from now until March 21.

– AFP Relaxnews