GAN Timeline

A chronology of milestones in the history of GANs, compiled by Bård Ionson in the course of researching Painting with Fire. Each of the two hundred artworks in the collection carries a Historic Event trait drawn from it.

178 entries · 1973–2023

1973Harold Cohen and AARONRead more
2014GAN - GoodfellowIan; Pouget-Abadie, Jean; Mirza, Mehdi; Xu, Bing; Warde-Farley, David; Ozair, Sherjil; Courville, Aaron; Bengio, Yoshua (2014). Generative Adversarial Nets (PDF). Proceedings of the International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2014). pp. 2672–2680.Read more
2014CGAN: Conditional Generative Adversarial NetworkMehdi Mirza Simon OsinderoRead more
2014BiGAN - GoodfellowIan; Pouget-Abadie, Jean; Mirza, Mehdi; Xu, Bing; Warde-Farley, David; Ozair, Sherjil; Courville, Aaron; Bengio, Yoshua (2014). Generative Adversarial Nets (PDF). Proceedings of the International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2014). pp. 2672–2680.Read more
Nov 2014Conditional GANs (cGANs) Introduced by Mirza and Osindero in 2014cGANs represented a significant advancement by allowing the generation of images conditioned on certain inputs, such as class labels. This innovation enabled more controlled and targeted image generation.Read more
2015-2022Mimi Onuoha “Missing Data”Read more
Nov 2015DCGAN - RadfordAlec; Metz, Luke; Chintala, Soumith . "Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks". ICLR. S2CID 11758569. a pivotal work in making GAN architectures more stable and robust, particularly for image generation.Read more
Dec 2015DCGAN - Dec 2015 Soumith checks in DCGAN code to GitHub.Read more
2016Gene Kogan"AI Mirror": Kogan is known for his works that explore AI's role in creativity and society. His "AI Mirror" is an interactive installation that uses GANs to transform reflections in real-time.Read more
2016CoGAN: Coupled Generative Adversarial Networks Ming-Yu LiuOncel TuzelRead more
Jan 2017Wasserstein GAN (WGAN): Introduced by Martin ArjovskySoumith Chintala, Léon Botton in 2017, WGAN addressed training stability issues in GANs by using a different approach to measure the distance between generated and real data distributions. This innovation led to more stable training of GANs and improved quality of generated images.Read more
March 2017CycleGANenabled unpaired image-to-image translation such as turning horses into zebras or apples into oranges, without needing paired training data. This was a major step forward in practical applications of GANs in image processing and artistic creation. Jun-Yan Zhu, Taesung Park, Phillip Isola, Alexei A. EfrosRead more
June 2017CAN: Creative Adversarial NetworksGenerating "Art" by Learning About Styles and Deviating from Style Norms June 2017 Ahmed Elgammal, Bingchen Liu, Mohamed Elhoseiny, Marian Mazzone We propose a new system for generating art. The system generates art by looking at art and learning about style; and becomes creative by increasing the arousal potential of the generated art by deviating from the learned styles.Read more
May 2017Memo Akten Webcam Pix2PixRead more
2017Mike Tyka - Portraits of Imaginary PeopleRead more
2017Memo AktenAn artificial neural network looks out onto the world and tries to make sense of what it is seeing. But it can only see through the filter of what it already knows.Read more
Aug 8 2017Robbie Barrat forks DCGAN to Art-DCGAN and increases size of model to 128 pixelsRead more
Aug 15, 2017Robbie Barrat uploads model weightsadded model weights he trained on portraits landscapes and nudes.Read more
October 2017Age of the AI Artisans exhibition - Dr. Ahmed Elgammal & AICANfirst AICAN exhibition in LA, based on CANRead more
2017SRGANPhoto-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Network. Christian Ledig, Lucas Theis, Ferenc Huszar, Jose Caballero, Andrew Cunningham, ´ Alejandro Acosta, Andrew Aitken, Alykhan Tejani, Johannes Totz, Zehan Wang, Wenzhe ShiRead more
2017-currentCaroline Sinders "Feminist Data Set"Read more
2018Pindar Van Arman creates robot and Ai software to paint AI Imagined FacesAI Imagined Faces by Pindar Van Arman wins Robot Art 2018 Incorporating machine-learning technology, Pindar was able to paint evocative portraits with varying degrees of abstraction.Read more
2018Artist: Albert (Shady Albert) makes GAN artRead more
2018Artist: Artist X (Shyam Sreevalsan) creates GAN artRead more
2018Artonymousartifakt creates GAN artRead more
2018BigBiGanJeff Donahue, Karen Simonyan, Large Scale Adversarial Representation Learning, 2018Read more
2018ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com Launched by Philip Wangusing NVIDIA's StyleGAN, this website generated endless streams of hyper-realistic human faces, showcasing the capabilities of GANs to the general public.
2018David Young Known For notable Ai and GAN artRead more
2018Nissla Artist utilizing Ai and GAN toolsRead more
2018Artist: Adrien Le Fallher - creator of AI artRead more
2018Peter Bock creator of AI artRead more
2018Place of Many (Brandi Kyle) Known For: Artbreeder making GAN art from acrylic fluid paintingRead more
2018WaveFunk (Hans Brouwer) SuperRare Ai ArtistRead more
2018GAN Artist WavefunkRead more
2018Dr. Ahmed Elgammal creates FreyaGreen Genesis, Tropical Inception, Flora, Psychedelic WisteriaRead more
2018Obvious: SuperRare Artist Notable Collection: de Belamy FamilyRead more
2018Sougwen Chung "Drawing Operations"Read more
2018Tom White "Perception Engines" A visual overview examining the ability of neural networks to create abstract representations from collections of real world objects.Read more
2018Ganbreeder is released now known as Artbreeder. is a collaborativemachine learning-based art website. Using the models StyleGAN and BigGAN, the website allows users to generate and modify images of faces, landscapes, and paintings, among other categories. https://github.com/joel-simon/ganbreederRead more
2018Playform - based on CAN started operations in 2018
2018Muse.s Endormie.sSold at the Grand Palais on Feb 13th 2018 after being assembled on July 2017 from the children of the cloud thousands of AI-generated portraits of all genders, ages and origins generated in 2016 by ALAgrApHY.Read more
2018ProGAN: Progressive growing of Generative Adversarial NetworksTero Karras, Timo Aila, Samuli Laine, Jaakko LehtinenRead more
April 2018HBO Silicon Valley TV series chose an AICAN art work HBO Silicon Valley TV serieschose an AICAN art work to be shown in an episode of the show. Ahmed ElgammalRead more
2018Sofia Crespo "Neural Zoo"Crespo is known for her work focusing on natural patterns and biological forms created with neural networks, including GANsRead more
2018Bård Ionson writes SAGE Anomalyin words and imges fusing the physical world with fiction and GAN images. A science fiction story that continues to this present time and into the future.
2018Zaza (Jacob Horne) SuperRare ArtistNotable Collection: Earth PornRead more
2018Joy Buolamwiniexamining racial and gender bias in facial analysis softwareRead more
September 1, 2018BigGAN - BrockAndrew; Donahue, Jeff; Simonyan, Karen. Large Scale GAN Training for High Fidelity Natural Image Synthesis. International Conference on Learning Representations 2019. arXiv:1809.11096. BigGAN, High-Resolution Image Generation:.Read more
Oct 25 2018Obvious"Edmond de Belamy," In 2018, a collective named Obvious created "Edmond de Belamy," an artwork generated by a GAN. This piece was one of the first instances of GAN-generated art being sold at a major auction house (Christie's), fetching an impressive price and marking a significant moment in the intersection of AI and art.Read more
November 2018Next Frame Prediction - Ryosuke NakajimaRead more
November 2018Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional Adversarial Networks Phillip IsolaJun-Yan Zhu, Tinghui Zhou, Alexei A. Efros a significant development in image-to-image translation using conditional GANs. It showed how GANs could be used for tasks like turning sketches into photographs or day scenes into night scenes.Read more
November 2018Bård Ionson mints his first art work on SuperRare as an NFT. Alien IntelligenceRead more
December 2018AI art exhibiting for first time in Art Basel MiamiDr. Ahmed Elgammal & AICAN at Art Basel MiamiRead more
2018-2019Pierre Huyghe UUmweltRead more
2018–2021Lynn Hershman Leeson"Shadow Stalker"Read more
2019-2020Kevin Abosch conceptual artist creates Nascent SpaceKevin Abosch creates conceptual GAN art using his own photographs in a series called Nascent Space. These include Nail a GAN generation using photos of nails (2019-2020)Read more
2019obxium creates GAN artRead more
Febuary 2019AICAN Ahmed Elgammalfirst AI solo exhibition in NYC gallery for AICAN, at HG ContemporaryRead more
March 2019Mario Klingemann"Memories of Passersby I," 2019, Sotheby's Auction:** Klingemann, a pioneer in AI art, used a GAN to create a continuously changing video stream of portraits. This artwork was sold at Sotheby's, marking another significant sale of GAN-generated art. $52,634Read more
March 2019Ai CryptoCoins by Bård Ionsonon SuperRare - art of coins using DCGAN - 22 on SR and 1 on KnownOriginRead more
May 2019Realti Ai art projectRead more
May 2019Rare Art Festival 2 exhibits GAN artKeven Abosch exhibited Expulsion 16.7 (2017) & Bård Ionson exhibited Air-Coin-Airdrop & The HODL Frame of North Bay CanadaRead more
May 2019High-Fidelity Image Generation With Fewer Labels Mario LucicMichael Tschannen, Marvin Ritter, Xiaohua Zhai, Olivier Bachem, Sylvain Gelly May 2019 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.02271.pdfRead more
May 24, 2019SAGANZhang Han; Goodfellow, Ian; Metaxas, Dimitris; Odena, Augustus. "Self-Attention Generative Adversarial Networks". International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR: 7354–7363.Read more
2019GauGAN: Semantic Image Synthesis with SPADE Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive NormalizationTaesung Park, Ming-Yu Liu, Ting-Chun Wang, Jun-Yan ZhuRead more
2019"Faces In The Cloud"Bård Ionson paints an oil painting of a GAN generated image "Faces In The Cloud" and mints it as NFT on Codex.Read more
2019GAN artist 0xBull GANerative LandscapeRead more
2019Liam Ellul - self portrait using GANRead more
2019Mike Almond - GAN artRead more
2019Artist The Galois Connection mints GAN art An Office Building in Seven StylesRead more
2019Damion Darko Martin Bammes GAN ArtRead more
2019kromond GAN artistRead more
June 2019Bård Ionson Solo Exhibtion ARTificial Creating The Future Out Of HistoryRead more
June 2019NVIDIA introduced StyleGAN in 2018which represented a major advancement in the field of computer-generated imagery. StyleGAN significantly improved the quality and resolution of generated images, leading to hyper-realistic results. This technology became widely known for its ability to generate highly detailed human faces.Read more
2019Noah GAN artistRead more
2019Sarah ZuckerDigital artist using analog methods to create art that reflects the past into the future.Read more
2019Rutger van der Tas created art with GANRead more
2019Bloemenveiling - Anna RidlerRead more
2019Sparrow (Black Box Art) creates with GAN "Lady Liberty Walks Away"Read more
2019Peter Bock creates "Seas of Europa - Still Frame" with GAN techRead more
2019Woman In Boots by solisRead more
2019Daniel JakobianRead more
2019Coming Home For Christmas GAN art by MLIBTYRead more
2019Germ Cell Cycle GAN art by Uwe DresemannRead more
2019DadaGAN Alexander RebenRead more
2019Kate Crawford and Trevor Paglen“Excavating AI: The Politics of Training Sets for Machine Learning (September 19, 2019) https://excavating.aiRead more
2019Anna Ridler"Mosaic Virus" used a GAN to generate tulip images based on Bitcoin price fluctuations, reflecting on the tulip mania and digital currency.Read more
2019Trevor Paglan and researcher Kate Crawford’s ImageNet Roulette projectRead more
2019Yuma Kishi creates with GANRead more
2019Journey With Ai - artist: illa_2020Read more
2019Lukas OpekarRead more
2019ProofOfArtwork (Hans Benzin) collaborates with Bård Ionsonon two Ai music videos using Ai music by Hans and Pix2Pix interpretations of the music by Bård Ionson. Bård again used oscilloscope animations of the music to train a model and generate a video.Read more
2019Yetepey Creator of The Yetepey SeriesRead more
2019WGMeets Creator of ⁠GanergyRead more
2019ShortcutSuperRare Artist and creator of ⁠Shortcuts. Artist used Ganbreeder and ArtbreederRead more
2019ProofOfArtwork (Hans Benzin) /h3>Known For: Cryptoportraits and AI music albums in PROOFofSOUND<Read more
2019Lukas Opekar (Hoxgen)Superare Artist & Makersplace AI artistRead more
2019Alex Shell creates GAN artRead more
2019Coldie Creator of ⁠GandinskyRead more
2019Yura Miron SuperRare Artist creating with AiRead more
2019BitcoinCreator of many Early AI Art Projects : digital art collective etherislands, ⁠abstract art collection, ⁠Ai human art, ⁠nfttracksRead more
September 2019DeepBlackDeepBlack collective begin minting 3,074 GAN art piecesRead more
2019Cslasha (Atay Ilgun) Creator of ⁠RealitiRead more
2019Infinite Skulls AI Paintings By Barrat And BarrotPainter vs Ai artist. Creating a GAN model from paintings of skulls.Read more
2020Zebbler creates GAN art for SuperRareRead more
2020Stina JonesCreator of ⁠Gandoodle SpecimensRead more
2020Mattia Cuttinicreates GAN art using Playform and his art of cutouts and rubber stampsRead more
2020Outside Forces Art Enables Gallery "Close Our Eyes" by Bård IonsonRead more
2020Marjan creates Capital #1 with GAN Generated PaintingsRead more
2020Samogan 2 by ArtNome Jason BaileyRead more
2020Berk "BASTARD GAN PUNK INCUBATION AUTOMATION UNIT #10947"Read more
2020Distancer by Anton DeeRead more
June 2020StyleGAN 2 - KarrasTero; Laine, Samuli; Aittala, Miika; Hellsten, Janne; Lehtinen, Jaakko; Aila, Timo (June 2020). "Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN". 2020 IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). IEEE. pp. 8107–8116. arXiv:1912.04958. doi:10.1109/cvpr42600.2020.00813. ISBN 978-1-7281-7168-5. S2CID 209202273Read more
2020Sven Eberwein - Deep Meme #3Read more
2020Jascha Suess - LucidRead more
2020Bård creates Fountain a 501 piece collection of images created from a StyleGan 2 model of toilets.
2020Sweep By TommyRead more
2020GAN36 [Cultured Meat] - Dave EstesRead more
2020Scott Eaton "Hyperbolic Composition I - Genesis"Read more
2020Bård collaborates with Lawrence Leea notable artist known for his visions of the American southwest. They created a series of 13 artpieces called Convergence. Bård spent months training GAN models of the 50 years of paintings by Lawrence Lee. Released on SuperRare in 2020Read more
2020Virtual Rare Art FestivalRead more
2020Shortcut creates ShortcutsRead more
2020Fountain Remix Bård Ionson - Innovation of GAN toilets and remixing art.Read more
2020Sofia Crespo & Feileacán McCormick “Specimens”Read more
2020Bård collaborates with Gisel Xon "Collaboration Of Dreamtime" a GAN study of a journey of a person and a landscape.Read more
2020Daniel Ambrosi Pestilent TrumpRead more
2020Bård Ionson's "The Gate"sells for a record 8.2 Eth on Async.art 24 hour animated GAN artRead more
2020Bard creates "The Android of Dorian Grey VI"on AsyncArt a day and night rotating GAN art. Sold for 5 EthRead more
2020Bard creates "Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde"a GAN art that changes from day to night. It is an early example of extending the frame of GAN art so it is not square.Read more
2020Bård Ionson interviewed on the radio for the show Art Box DMVRead more
2020Daïm Aggott-Hönsch creates Cressida in Reverie with GANRead more
2020Travis LeRoy Southworth uses the Playform AICAN for The Watcher (Clown Cloud-1)Read more
2020Isabella Salas’ “Small Flower Bits”Read more
2020Hacking the Tower "Decentralized Culture Lost"by Bård shown on the D&F Tower in DenverRead more
2020CADAF 2020 onlne showcased these works by BårdGlobal Reality, Artificial Artist (Deep Fake Max), Dreams of Internet Dweller Seven, Latent Spacecraft, The Artificial Intelligence Spawns, SAGE Anomaly Redux, Welcome To Earth, Artificial Intelligence Triality, Maximum TV RatingsRead more
2020Erin creates "neural triptych" using GANNRead more
2020-2021AI More Than Human ExhibitionThis international exhibition, which traveled to various locations including the Barbican in London, showcased the role of AI in art and included GAN-generated artworks.Read more
2021Holly Herndon: "CLASSIFIED"Read more
2021TransGANJiang, Yifan; Chang, Shiyu; Wang, Zhangyang (December 8, 2021). "TransGAN: Two Pure Transformers Can Make One Strong GAN, and That Can Scale Up". arXiv:2102.07074 [cs.CV].Read more
June 23, 2021StyleGAN 3 - TimoKarras, Tero Aittala, Miika Laine, Samuli Härkönen, Erik Hellsten, Janne Lehtinen, Jaakko Aila (June 23, 2021). Alias-Free Generative Adversarial Networks. OCLC 1269560084.Read more
Aug 2021Jake Elwes: "Zizi - Queering the Dataset"including those using GANs, have been part of NFT exhibitions and sales. His work typically explores AI ethics, queerness, and the nature of generative algorithms.Read more
2021Paul Mouginotof aurèce vettier creates "then came clouds of smoke"Read more
Oct 2021Bard's The Treachery Of Tokens sells for 11 EthRead more
2021Adrià Gilcreates "the spanish civil war bombs" with GAN technologyRead more
2021Crossing The Interfaceby Holly Herndon and Mat DryhurstRead more
2021VQ-VAE-2 for High Fidelity Image SynthesisAli Razavi, Aaron van den Oord, Oriol Vinyals The Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder (VQ-VAE-2) showed impressive results in generating high-fidelity images, pushing the envelope in terms of image quality and resolution in GANs.Read more
2021Scott Eaton"Entangled": Eaton's work combines classical artistic techniques with advanced computer algorithms, including GANs, to create sculptures and other artworks.Read more
2019 minted in 2021Bard's Freaky Facesare made from faces made with SPADE GauGAN and some are animated using thin plate spine motion model. The faces were constructed from the artists drawings of faces with extra eyes noses and mouths.
2021LizaGrace mints "Colorform Metaverse"Read more
2021CryptoArt Revolution Paris Exhibition"Knights of the Apocalypse", "Color of Crypto by Bård IonsonRead more
2021Outside Forces Art Enables Gallery "Presidential Portrait for 2017- 2021"by Bård IonsonRead more
2021Abstract Art in the Age of New MediaMuseum Of Contemporary Digital Art "Life Is Green", "Alien Life of Venus" Bård IonsonRead more
Jan 2022Linda Dounia "Dust is hard to breath" based on 2000 images based on her own acrylic paintings and inspired by the Fremen in Dune.Read more
2022GenesisClair SilverRead more
2022Pindar Van Arman creates a Quantum Portrait of Bård IonsonRead more
2022Bård Ionson Announces a Limited Edition Sage Anomaly Series Release: The EntityRead more
2022Distortion Genius: Bård Ionsona Singular Artist for a New Age written by William PeasterRead more
2022Multiple pieces of art by Bård Ionsonare celebrated at Historic Art FestRead more
2022Bård Ionson interviewed for the second time on ArtBox DMV radio showRead more
2022"The Dance (of Fire)" by Bård Ionsonexhibit at Ça sent le Crypto-Sapin Paris NFT FactoryRead more
2022CADAF 2022 New York CityBård Ionson exhibits and sells multiple GAN art pieces. Soul Scroll interactive blockchain prayer machine is also exhibited for the first time.Read more
2022Historic NFT Fest Barcelona"Representation Of The Entity" by Bård IonsonRead more
2022"HODL Frame of North Bay Canada"at Icons of CryptoArt DubaiRead more
2022"PodGans" Pindar Van ArmanRead more
2022Pindar Van Armancreates quantum Ai art "Quantum Portraits" Did he use a GAN?Read more
Apr 2022VQGAN-CLIP: Open Domain Image Generation and Editing with Natural Language GuidanceKatherine Crowson, Stella Biderman, Daniel Kornis, Dashiell Stander, Eric Hallahan, Louis Castricato, Edward Raff - innovation in prompting a model with language to produce imagesRead more
2022Crypto Art Beginsbook is released featuring art of 50 cryptoartists including Bård IonsonRead more
2022Anne Spalter - Ai Spaceships (Night Cafe)Anne Spalter is an established digital mixed-media artist known for her innovative use of technology including artificial intelligence and GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks), in creating artRead more
2023Pascal Boyart - "Legend"Read more
2023Mattia Cuttini "Back And Forth"exhibition NFTFactory Paris contains multiple GAN created pieces.Read more
2023Kill Them All"For the second time Bård Ionson and Lawrence Lee collaborate on "Kill Them All" made from GAN and hand drawings curated by Eleonora Brizi of Breezy GalleryRead more
2023CyborgDAO"Ionson is one of the first crypto artists to mint on the blockchain in 2018. With an algorithmic style which favors cohesion of color where edges blend objects meld together while subjects always remain recognizable in both political and crypto-specific artwork."Read more
2023IHAM Gallery MoCA Collection "Color of Crypto""Bard's Freaky Faces" by Bård IonsonRead more
2023-2024Bård Ionson's work called "Battledore" is donated to the Oxford Bodleian Libraries collection and appears in the Alphabets Alive Exhibition. The images from this work were used to train Bårds first GAN model used for many early pieces.Read more
April 2023"Deep Fake Max (Artificial Artist)" donated to the Pompidou Museum ParisBård's art "Deep Fake Max (Artificial Artist)" donated by Dan Polko to the Pompidou Museum ParisRead more
Aug 2023Collector: Burcin burcin.eth"From the day zero I figured out that there s a digital art communityBard’s style and approach caught my attention. I’m big fan of experimenting and it’s guaranteed to find it in every aspect of Bard Ionson art as crafted masterfully. Such a bright and wise mind who plays with curiosity in many different levels"Read more
June 2023Bård is slected for the NFT Art Prize 2023 by Arab Bank Switzerland for 'Future Is Where East & West Touch" not GAN art but made with Stable DiffusionRead more
March 2023La Trahison de l’IA (The Treachery of Ai)100% created by artificial intelligence – or not exhibition NFT Factory selected Bård for an Ai art exhibition in 2023. Bård produced "La Trahison de l’IA (The Treachery of Ai)" A self portrait of his Ai self speaking French.Read more

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Compiled by Bård Ionson for Painting with Fire: a History in GANs, 2023. Entries link out to the original papers, exhibitions and works.