A computer scientist told the National Press Club's photojournalism group recently that the billions of photos posted on the internet are training algorithms for generating images made with artificial intelligence. Robert Pless, computer science professor and a specialist in computer vision at George Washington University, described the algorithms and their development by leading generative AI image software at a meeting of the Club's Photo Team July 12.
Pless told the attendees that generative AI uses algorithms called large language models trained by massive text and image collections to produce new content on demand from user prompts and specifications. Those algorithms employ predictive formulas to produce new material based on the latest examples in their data sets. With images, generative AI software like DALL-E (pronounced "dolly") and Midjourney trains their algorithms by matching images to captions. DALL-E is offered by OpenAI, the same company that makes ChatGPT, the now well-known text generative AI software.
Read the National Press Club's event recap.