Many fear that the rise of artificial intelligence may overshadow traditions as everyone leaves the old for the new.
Some experts, however, choose to use technology to preserve culture, such as Sakana AI.
AI model hub Hugging Face offers Sakana’s AI model, Evo-Ukiyoe, that lets everyone turn pictures into Ukiyo-e-style Japanese prints.
It can likewise depict images that were not available during its origin, such as hamburgers and skyscrapers.
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The Japanese tech firm Sakana hopes their work can help spread the culture of “Japanese beauty” worldwide. Moreover, sharing its story may convince other countries to develop similar AI applications for their cultures.
What’s known about Sakana AI?
The Kumon Ukiyo-e website explains the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints started during the Tokugawa or Edo Period (1615 to 1868).
The involved pieces of wood bearing different designs. The artist will apply pigment on these blocks and put them on paper one by one, combining them into an artwork.
Its most famous work is “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by the artist Hokusai. Nowadays, you’ll notice his waves in all Japanese souvenir shops.
The Japanese firm Sakana wants to go beyond the gift shops and share ukiyo-e with the world. That is why its experts created Evo-Ukiyoe and Evo-Nishikie.
VentureBeat says the company developed the AI based on Evo-SDXL-JP. It is an AI model made with its model-merging technique and Stability AI’s SDXL.
The organization fine-tuned the program with over 24,000 carefully-captioned ukiyo-e artworks. These came from their partnership with the Art Research Center (ARC) of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.
“We curated this data with a wide range of subjects, covering including whole art and face-centered ones, from the digital images of ukiyo-e in the ARC collection. We also focused on multi-colored nishiki-e with beautiful colors while considering diversity,” Sakana AI stated.
Evo-Ukiyoe lets users turn any image into ukiyo-e prints, even non-Japanese or modern objects like laptops and hamburgers.
On the other hand, Evo-Nishikie colorizes black-and-white Ukiyo-e prints. Sakana AI hopes both tools will help the world appreciate traditional “Japanese beauty.”