Month: January 2022

What started as Nick Walton’s college hackathon project grew into AI Dungeon, a popular text adventure game with over 1.5 million users. Walton is the co-founder and CEO of Latitude, a Utah-based startup that uses AI to create unique gaming storylines. He spoke with NVIDIA AI Podcast host Noah Kravitz about how natural language processing Read article >

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Researchers developed a new AI algorithm that can identify a painter based on brushstrokes, with precision down to a single bristle.

Spotting painting forgeries just became a bit easier with a newly developed AI tool that picks up style differences with precision down to a single paintbrush bristle. The research, from a team at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), trained convolutional neural networks to learn and identify a painter based on the 3D topography of a painting. This work could help historians and art experts distinguish between artists in collaborative pieces, and find fraudulent copies.

There are several methods to authenticating antique paintings. Experts often evaluate the style and condition of materials and use scientific methods such as microscopic analysis, infrared spectroscopy, and reflectography.

However, these exhaustive methods are time-consuming and can result in errors. They also cannot identify multiple painters of one piece of art. According to the study, painters such as El Greco and Rembrandt often employed workshops of artists to paint parts of a canvas in the same style as their own, making individual contributions unclear.

While analyzing artwork with machine learning is a relatively new field, recent studies have focused on combining AI methods with high-resolution images of paintings to learn a painter’s style and identify an artist. The researchers hypothesized that 3D analysis could hold even more data than an image, where features such as brushwork patterns along with paint deposition and drying methods could serve as an artist’s unique fingerprint. 

“3D topography is a new way for AI to ‘see’ a painting,” senior author Kenneth Singer, the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics at CWRU, said in a press release.

Extracting topographical data from a surface with an optical profiler, the researchers scanned 12 paintings of the same scene, painted with identical materials, but by four different artists. Sampling small square patches of the art, approximately 5 to 15 mm, the optical profiler detects and logs minute changes on a surface, which can be attributed to how someone holds and uses a paintbrush. 

They then trained an ensemble of convolutional neural networks to find patterns in the small patches, sampling between 160 to 1,440 patches for each of the artists. Using NVIDIA GPUs with cuDNN-accelerated deep learning frameworks, the algorithm matches the samples back to a single painter.

The team tested the algorithm against 180 patches of an artist’s painting, matching the samples back to a painter at about 95% accuracy. 

According to coauthor Michael Hinczewski, the Warren E. Rupp Associate Professor of Physics at CWRU, the ability to work with such small training sets is promising for later art historical applications with limited training datasets.

“Most of the other studies using AI for art attribution are focused on photos of entire paintings,” said Hinczewski. “We broke the painting down into virtual patches ranging from one-half millimeter to a few centimeters square. So we no longer even have information about the subject matter—but we can accurately predict who painted it from an individual patch. That’s amazing.”

Based on their findings the researchers view surface topography as an additional tool for attribution and forgery detection using an unbiased and quantitative analysis. In a collaboration with art conservation company Factum Arte based in Madrid, the team is working on artist workshop attribution and conservation studies on several works of the Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco.

The data and code associated with the research are available through GitHub. The work is a joint effort between researchers from the CWRU Department of Art History and Art, Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Read the published research in Heritage Science. >>
Read the press release. >>

Explore NVIDIA Metropolis partners showcasing new technologies to improve city mobility at CES 2022.

Consumer Electronics Show (CES), an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association, brings together thought leaders, products, and technologies working to transform traffic and roadways, an important cross-section of daily life.

With limited roadways and growing populations, cities increasingly look to automation, and simulation for managing traffic and constrained infrastructure. NVIDIA partners worldwide are deploying the NVIDIA Metropolis video analytics platform, leveraging real-time sensors and AI to design more efficient roadways and optimize traffic safety and operations. 

The following NVIDIA Metropolis partners are showcasing how they help manage traffic with AI at CES. 

Asilla: Asilla develops behavior recognition AI solutions that use posture estimation technology to enhance public safety. Asilla is helping cities and a wide range of industries improve safety and security by detecting abnormal behavior in real-time and enabling prompt response to events. Check out Asilla at booth #51127 in Sands Hall.

Bitsensing: Bitsensing uses GPU and radar technology to connect cities, roads, buildings, and individuals, building the complete autonomous, connected environment. With cutting-edge imaging radar technology, Bitsensing accelerates creating the ultimate smart city to bring a new level of reliability and convenience. Visit Bitsensing at booth #61059 in Eureka Park.

Ekin: Ekin develops the next generation of smart city solutions to optimize safety and security for cities. A forward-thinking provider of quantitative data to cities based on cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, with a focus on traffic management, smart parking, smart city living, and public safety. Visit Ekin at LVCC – North Hall Booth #9136.

Nota: Nota produces an AI software optimization platform, which automates and optimizes customers’ AI applications. Nota creates lightweight AI models that are low latency, energy-efficient, and accurate. They work to optimize processor usage and proliferate lower-end edge devices. Check out Nota at booth #9646 in LVCC North Hall.

NoTraffic: NoTraffic’s real-time, plug-and-play autonomous traffic management platform uses AI and cloud computing to reinvent how cities run their transport networks. The NoTraffic platform is an end-to-end hardware and software solution installed at intersections, transforming roadways to optimize traffic flows and reduce accidents. Check out NoTraffic at booth #9130 in LVCC North Hall.

Ouster: Cities are using Ouster digital lidar solutions to capture the environment in minute detail and detect vehicles, vulnerable road users, and incidents in real time to improve safety and traffic efficiency. Ouster lidar’s 3D spatial awareness and 24/7 performance combine the high-resolution imagery of cameras with the all-weather reliability of radar. Check out Ouster and live demos at booth #3843 in LVCC West Hall.

Velodyne Lidar: Velodyne’s lidar-based Intelligent Infrastructure Solution (IIS) is a complete end-to-end Smart City solution. IIS creates a real-time 3D map of roads and intersections, providing precise traffic and pedestrian safety analytics, road user classification, and smart signal actuation. The solution is deployed in the US, Canada and across EMEA and APAC. Check out Velodyne Lidar at booth #6005 in LVCC West Hall.

Register for CES, happening Jan. 5-8 in Las Vegas.

GeForce NOW is kicking off the new year by bringing more games, more devices and more networks to our cloud gaming ecosystem. The next pair of Electronic Arts games, Battlefield 4 and Battlefield V, is streaming on GeForce NOW. We’re also working closely with a few titans in their respective industries: AT&T and Samsung. AT&T Read article >

The post GeForce NOW Delivers Legendary GeForce Gaming With More Games on More Networks to More Devices appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

CES has long been a showcase on what’s coming down the technology pipeline. This year, NVIDIA is showing the radical innovation happening now. During a special virtual address at the show, Ali Kani, vice president and general manager of Automotive at NVIDIA, detailed the capabilities of DRIVE Hyperion and the many ways the industry is Read article >

The post Autonomous Era Arrives at CES 2022 With NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion and Omniverse Avatar appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

Designed to be the foundation that connects virtual worlds, NVIDIA Omniverse is now available to millions of individual NVIDIA Studio creators using GeForce RTX and NVIDIA RTX GPUs. In a special address at CES, NVIDIA also announced new platform developments for Omniverse Machinima and Omniverse Audio2Face, new platform features like Nucleus Cloud and 3D marketplaces, Read article >

The post NVIDIA Makes Free Version of Omniverse Available to Millions of Individual Creators and Artists Worldwide appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

We’re at the dawn of the next digital frontier. Creativity is fueling new developments in design, innovation and virtual worlds. For the creators driving this future, we’ve built NVIDIA Studio, a fully accelerated platform with high-performance GPUs as the heartbeat for laptops and desktops. This hardware is paired with exclusive NVIDIA RTX-accelerated software optimizations in Read article >

The post Groundbreaking Updates to NVIDIA Studio Power the 3D Virtual Worlds of Tomorrow, Today appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

As art evolves and artists’ abilities grow, so must their creative tools. NVIDIA Canvas, the free beta app and part of the NVIDIA Studio suite of creative apps and tools, has brought the real-time painting tool GauGAN to anyone with an NVIDIA RTX GPU. Artists use advanced AI to quickly turn simple brushstrokes into realistic Read article >

The post NVIDIA Canvas Updated With New AI Model Delivering 4x Resolution and More Materials appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.

Putting the power of graphics and AI at the fingertips of more users than ever, NVIDIA announced today new laptops and autonomous vehicles using GeForce RTX and NVIDIA AI platforms and expanded reach for GeForce NOW cloud gaming across Samsung TVs and the AT&T network. A virtual address prior to CES showed next-gen games, new Read article >

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