AI for Fun: Awesome Apps You Can Test Right Now

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. What is it? Just another hype, modern trend to name the technology, or maybe, it is a potential superpower to kill humans?! Today we hear those buzzwords and what is more serious, wrong assumptions about them from everywhere, but only a few understand what it really is and how it works. And if you are not among the latter one, maybe it’s time to change this situation? If your answer is yes, I offer you learning this technology through the uncomplicated and entertaining approach. It’s unnecessary to spend a couple of hours on boring research, just try AI by yourself and explore its capabilities on practice.

AI in Your Browser: Talk to Books, Draw like an Artist and More

1. Semantris : When was the last time you played Tetris?

It’s a fun and interactive project, which makes possible to play verbal associations with Artificial Intelligence. Recently launched by Google-AI team, Semantris is focused on handling simple human speech and differentiating logical connections between words. As you may see, it is an analog of Tetris but instead of the blocks, there are words.

AI sets the word and asks you to come up with the closest to it by means, for example, “sleep” to the word “bed.” Then it compares the relationship between your answer and the original word with other words from the list. The more matches with other words, the more points you get. The correct word between blocks leads to the removal of this block.

How does it work?

The neural network authenticates the meaning of individual words and finds them semantically similar.

What is a Neural Network?

In simple words, it is a class of computing system. They are created from very simple processing nodes formed into a network. They are inspired by the way that biological systems such as the brain work, albeit many orders of magnitude less complex at the moment. They are fundamentally patterned recognition systems and tend to be more useful for tasks which can be described in terms of pattern recognition.

Why was this project created?

Google, using Semantris, teaches vector models for neural networks and tests artificial intelligence.

2. This Person Does Not Exist: Refresh the page to get another fake person generated by AI

This girl looks beautiful, but she does not exist, it’s just one more creation of AI. So yes, don’t try to find any of the generated persons on the net no matter how beautiful he or she will be (who knows).

Quite possibly, many of you have already heard about such a service. It is the first project of its own kind, and so it was not surprising it made huge waves upon release and eventually went viral. Here you can create fake pics in a second; all you need to do is to visit the site and refresh the page.

How does it work?

The project author is Uber’s engineer Philip Wang; he used an algorithm known as a generative adversarial network (GAN) (originally coded by Nvidia) to render hyper-realistic portraits. All images are generated on the basis of an extensive library, the system consistently uses two neural networks: one creates a picture, and the other evaluates its realism.

Why was this project created?

Wang initially used it as a way to convince a few friends to join him on the independent AI research. Consequently, he decided a wider audience could benefit from learning about the potential of GANs. He said the reaction echos how important it is to inform people about how this type of technology could be both revolutionary and dangerous.

And so it begins…

After launching the project with faces, other developers had used project’s code, which, by the way, is in open access on Github, for other sites like thiscatdoesnotexist.com and thesecatsdonotexist.com to create fake pics of the cats. And yes, they also look quite realistic, but you can also notice some strange fragments, sometimes it looks extremely weird.

3. AutoDraw: Scribble-fixing auto draw tool to bring you a perfect picture

Another one exciting and entertaining thing, and maybe for someone even really useful! Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, AutoDraw helps to turn sloppy sketches into well-defined, well-drawn images.

You can draw whatever object you want, just make a few lines and AI will predict what exactly you planned to draw. It can easily recognize your crude drawings, whether it’s a flower or a cake or a smiley face, and it can smartly serve up pre-drawn alternatives created by “talented artists” to replace it.

How does it work?

At the heart of AutoDraw, the AI compares images with an extensive database and selects the most similar options. The more details you add, the better and more credible the recommendations will be. And again, for this, AutoDraw uses artificial neural networks​ to recognize the drawings.

4. Cyborg Writer: neural text synthesizer to overcome writer’s block

This experimental text editor is able to add a sequel in words and sentences to any text you specify. Just write whatever words you want and an artificial neural network running in your browser will finish your sentence as if it were written by Shakespeare, the US Supreme Court, or Tupac Shakur.

How does it work?

Again, the whole system is based on a trained model, it’s used to predict the most suitable response to what you’re typing.

Honestly talking, sometimes Cyborg Writer’s text suggestions are far from the meaning of the text you entered. However, creators didn’t promise impeccable accuracy right from the beginning and called it an experimental project. Perhaps, service will grow more advanced with time. As for now, it’s pretty awesome to use just for fun and see what text AI will generate for you.

5. Talk to Books

One more AI-powered app from Google AI team, which amply demonstrating on what this innovative technology is capable of. Talk to Books gives answers to your questions through quotes from books. Unlike standard search, this one is not afraid of even the most abstract questions like ‘what is the meaning of life?’ and ‘what does it mean to be human?’.

So you can count on honest answers even to the most unusual questions. Just look at what result I got making a request ‘what is Cthulhu’:

How does it work?

It uses vector-based language learning to search books for contextually relevant answers to questions, all without needing to match keywords. Word vector language modeling maps synonyms, antonyms, related terms, context clues, and other natural uses of language to find relationships between statements.

There are about 100,000 works in the project database, and the recommendation engine is trying to find the most suitable extracts within the meaning of it.

Also, you can filter by category of books and select only those genres what you like the most:

Fun & Useful AI-Apps on Your Phone

Mobile apps are part and parcel of everyone’s daily lives, but AI-powered apps have even more chances to become a reliable and irreplaceable helper for you. Right now, apps using Artificial Intelligence can do a bunch of things that are not only fun but also useful. Let’s have a closer look at them!

1. Replika

Ever heard of digital technology powered by machine learning technology? Replika is exactly such an app which will help you to increase your conversations.

Virtual assistants based on Artificial Intelligence are everywhere. You can ask Siri to set your alarm up; Alexa to call Uber and so on, but there is no one to really talk to and have a deep conversation. Replika came exactly from this idea. Artificial intelligence that scans your social networks and asks so many questions about you is naive and curious as a child, but only at first. You can train this app with time, so all depends on you. Each answer will be stored in memory and will be raised later. So you can make your personal copy of yourself and then make whatever conversation you want with it.

Download From PlayStore

Download From iTunes

2. Jarvis Artificial Intelligent

AI empowered applications have come as a surprisingly positive development. Jarvis is actually one such app. It was created by Mark Zuckerberg, who was inspired by the assistant from the remarkable movie Iron Man. Jarvis can control the light, temperature, select music for you and set up security systems in your house. What is more, this virtual assistant is constantly learning to recognize voices and faces. And yes, all these features are available only by dint of mobile app. But honestly, I’m not sure about the perfection of this work, but the app is definitely worth a trying to use.

Download From PlayStore

3. Youper

Youper is a smart AI therapy app. It is a free and user-friendly AI-powered assistant that can respond to your troubles. It can be your superb health fitness app which contains cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), meditation, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Along with these, you can also use it as free stretching apps to get stretching tips to stretch your body. It is an awesome app which takes care of you with different health tips.

Download From PlayStore

Download From iTunes

Instead of Conclusion

So what is Artificial intelligence? It’s not only a label for a study of whatever might answer the question ‘what is required for a machine to exhibit intelligence’; but also it’s a powerful tool to help us automate our work across many industries. An exact indicator of the marvels of AI-technology is its accessibility. Now we can easily leverage it through helpful apps. So yes, it’s totally worth learning more things about it and stay on top of emerging technology trends.

Read more informative and dope topics on AI, ML & Data Science from my Medium and Instagram blog.

Please leave a few claps and comments. Thank you for reading!

AI for Fun: Awesome Apps You Can Test Right Now was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.