BERLIN: Generating faces of people that don't even exist: This is a popular discipline among artificial intelligence (AI) researchers to demonstrate and further develop the possibilities of artificial neural networks.

But it can also be done with houses, as Pieter Levels shows at his website www.thishousedoesnotexist.org. The software developer has created an AI that can generate exterior and interior views of houses as well as the appropriate image caption and descriptive text.

Tapping on the house image when you visit the page creates a new house, usually one that is beautiful and architecturally harmonious.

The pleasant appearance of most of the houses is thanks to the fact that Levels has fed his machine-learning model mainly with pictures of well-liked houses and beautiful panoramas.

Sometimes the skyline of a world metropolis plays a role in the background of the often organic-looking buildings. And some of the artificially-generated construction details might elicit a worried frown from a structural engineer.

If you like one of the AI creations, you can rate it positively by clicking on "Upvote it." And if you select one of the thematic tags that change to match the image (such as wood, concrete, beach or interior), you’ll be taken to a selection of the corresponding images that users liked best.

 - dpa