AI Invents Paint Colors: Stanky Bean Anyone?

Research scientist Janelle Shane has been working with artificial intelligence and neural network software and decided to ask it do something different – create its own paint colors. The AI went to work and came up with some odd colors with really, really weird names.

The colors were created by feeding the system a library of 7,700 Sherwin-Williams paint color names and their RGB values. At first the AI used combinations of existing color names and seem to like mixing the words blue, brown, and grey together. It ended up with Caae Brae, Caae Blae, and so on. As it continued, things got so much stranger.

How about a pink color called Bank Butt or a beige called Snowbonk? There’s a nice dark blue called Dorkwood and a mauve-ish color called Light of Blast. My favorite is a greige (my wife assures me that is actually a thing which is a grey-beige mixture) called Sindis Poop. Perhaps the funniest though are the last two colors, a pink called Stanky Bean and a brown very aptly called Turdly.

Janelle continues to fine-tune the algorithm, and it seems to be getting better in her latest experiments. I prefer the original AI, which clearly was about 10 years old mentally.

[via Ars Technica]

Crayola to Retire and Replace One Color from Its 24-color Box

Back in grade school, we judged how well off you were by the size of the box of crayons you brought to class. If you had that giant 64-color box with the built in sharpener, your family clearly was rolling in dough. If you brought the generic colors in an 8-box you were on the opposite end of the economic scale. These days, schools put the middle-of-the-road 24 color box on the required school supply list to make things more equal.

Now, Crayola has announced that it will be killing off one of the Crayons in the 24 count box. At first glance you might think perhaps the shitty white Crayon would get the axe, but that one is needed to make different shades of the other colors. It’s the only way you got gray back in the day unless your rich parents sprung for the 64-count box.

This is the same thing that Monopoly pulled when it retired the thimble. The announcement of the retired color and what color will replace it will come on March 31, also known as National Crayon Day (who knew?) My money’s on that ever so slightly different blue color in the top row.

[via Mashable]