adweek

[adweek]

Issa Rae for AdWeek Magazine, 2017

[adweek]

Issa Rae photographed by Chris Loupos for Adweek

I love that you kind of get a lens into people’s personalities just by their reactions to certain parts of the show.

[adweek]

Will AI take creative jobs? Judging by these paint names, probably not today: http://adweek.it/2rI0RbI

New paint colors invented by neural network

So if you’ve ever picked out paint, you know that every infinitesimally different shade of blue, beige, and gray has its own descriptive, attractive name. Tuscan sunrise, blushing pear, Tradewind, etc… There are in fact people who invent these names for a living. But given that the human eye can see millions of distinct colors, sooner or later we’re going to run out of good names. Can AI help?

For this experiment, I gave the neural network a list of about 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint colors along with their RGB values. (RGB = red, green, and blue color values) Could the neural network learn to invent new paint colors and give them attractive names?

One way I have of checking on the neural network’s progress during training is to ask it to produce some output using the lowest-creativity setting. Then the neural network plays it safe, and we can get an idea of what it has learned for sure.

By the first checkpoint, the neural network has learned to produce valid RGB values - these are colors, all right, and you could technically paint your walls with them. It’s a little farther behind the curve on the names, although it does seem to be attempting a combination of the colors brown, blue, and gray.

By the second checkpoint, the neural network can properly spell green and gray. It doesn’t seem to actually know what color they are, however.

Let’s check in with what the more-creative setting is producing.

…oh, okay.

Later in the training process, the neural network is about as well-trained as it’s going to be (perhaps with different parameters, it could have done a bit better - a lot of neural network training involves choosing the right training parameters). By this point, it’s able to figure out some of the basic colors, like white, red, and grey:

Although not reliably.

In fact, looking at the neural network’s output as a whole, it is evident that:

The neural network really likes brown, beige, and grey.

The neural network has really really bad ideas for paint names.

[adweek]

These incredible Play-Doh ads took 948 pots to make, and they’re for grownups as much as kids: http://adweek.it/2qVuUPS

[adweek]

The Americans has the best key art of any TV show. We asked FX to walk us through all 5 seasons: http://adweek.it/2mcrNxV

[adweek]

How Budweiser created an epic immigrant story to reclaim the Super Bowl spotlight: http://adweek.it/2k77aSG

[adweek]

This Colorado agency just made 3 strains of marijuana specifically for ad people: http://adweek.it/2jGM3bF

[adweek]

This online advent calendar counts down all of 2016's terrible events: http://adweek.it/2h2isX7

#BadventCalendar Day 6 - On June 3, the mother*ckin’ King of the Ring Muhammad Ali died. And his work for charity was equally f*cking knockout. So, be a f*cking champ like Ali & donate to Educaid Sierra Leone here http://bit.ly/Badvent2016

[adweek]

The latest illustrations created in partnership with students from the Baltimore Academy of Illustration, for David Shing’s story on what chatbots are teaching us about the future of marketing: http://adweek.it/2fkZIEH

[adweek]

How Tasty’s addictive cooking videos helped @buzzfeed build a food empire: http://adweek.it/2fkYGc9

[adweek]

The World Wildlife Fund made these creepy Halloween masks of environmental horrors: http://adweek.it/2feVE98

[adweek]

So damn good: http://adweek.it/2ePS2qI

[adweek]

The story behind these very strange anti-Trump ads that popped up in NYC today: http://adweek.it/2eMSE0o

[adweek]

This musical masterpiece with dancing dad bods is actually an organ donation campaign: http://adweek.it/2eKwUQX

[adweek]

Perfect. 

(x)

[adweek]

Here are a bunch of nicknames for breasts in 1-second animations, for a good cause: http://adweek.it/2ejnZd4

[adweek]

Here's how Lisa Vanderpump went from restaurateur to reality TV tour de force: http://adweek.it/2ehf6Rp