This machine's the stuff of nightmares

  • 31/10/2016
Some of the scary faces created by the Nightmare Machine (MIT)
Some of the scary faces created by the Nightmare Machine (MIT)

A computer that can read your fears and create them? Sounds like a nightmare.

Just in time for Halloween, the aptly named 'Nightmare Machine' is doing just that.

The computer's artificial intelligence uses an algorithm to figure out what terrifies people, then creates new images to make them even scarier.

Users are asked to vote on the faces and whether they are scary or not in this online questionnaire.

The algorithm works in a three step process:

The Nightmare Machine is a joint project between Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and Australian data analysts at Data 61.

Researchers Pinar Yanardag, Manuel Cebrian and Iyad Rahwan are posing the question: "Can machines learn to scare us?"

The computer isn't just creating scary faces, but scary places too. Filters have been applied to different monuments to create the stuff of nightmares.

Newshub.