It's December first; time to hang your Advent calendar and open up the first door! Neural network researcher Janelle Shane (previously at Neatorama) introduced an algorithm to the concept of an Advent calendar. This would be the old-fashioned kind before everyone expected chocolate, in which each of the 25 doors would open to a delightful picture. Shane instructed the neural network to follow a story involving a store called Shop of Strange Antiques that got an old Advent calendar with "atypical" images. The algorithm took that to heart. The image ideas were generated in text, then transferred to another algorithm to produce the pictures from the descriptions.
Shane asked for "atypical," and that's exactly what she got. They are downright bizarre and therefore priceless. A pack of wolves playing poker. Santa Claus strumming a banjo on a trampoline. You get the idea. The Advent calendar has been posted at AI Weirdness in an interactive form in case you want to only open one image per day, or all of them today if you prefer. There were more than 25 images generated because Shane knew that some would have to be discarded, and yes, 20 more were unsuitable for small pixel images or otherwise unusable, but those are listed in a bonus post for your pleasure.
