MetaPortal Podcast - cyberh49, Animetas
Primer: Cyberh49 is one of the team member of Animetas, a cyberpunk AI generative PFP project. Hosts AG and Dark Forest Capital speaks with him to learn more about his background, Animetas, and the roadmap for their project.
Background
Had an education in electrical engineering and a PhD in machine learning and computer vision
Is an AI and machine learning researcher
Did AI generated art as a hobby
A contributor to Animetas, an AI generative PFP project
How Did He Get Into The Space
One of his friends introduced him to NBA Top Shot
Did not understand why would anyone want to buy a clip that could be watched on YouTube
Did research and NFTs clicked with him as he comes from a family of huge collectors
Had an idea of turning his AI generated art into NFTs
One of his favourite artist is called PixelGustavo, who made a pixel art print where Jon Snow fights against the dead walkers from Game of Thrones
Reached out to him and introduced him to NFTs
PixelGustavo made a few pieces of a series depicting himself as a child and and his father taking him to various places
Decided to create the Animetas project after that
Animetas: The Beginnings
Wanted to make an entire universe for their project
The team grew up on the Marvel, Star Wars, and Disney franchises
Believes that NFTs can be used as a mechanism of decentralized content creation, where people own the non exclusive IP for their pieces
In the last few years, Disney bought the Star Wars franchise and made changes to what was considered Canon in the previous trilogies. Fans were upset by this
“I think fans not having a lot of say in what happens in this [Star Wars] universe that they grew up on and know by heart is pretty annoying. It makes you feel like, okay, that's like, someone takes my beloved franchise, and just change this, because they bought the rights.”
- Cyberh49
Decentralization of content enables people to take the world wherever they want, create background and stories for the characters to play in
Thoughts On AI Generated Art VS Traditional Generative Art
Traditional generative art takes very small numbers of degrees of freedom
Animetas is an example of traditional generative art — It comprises of multiple layers, and each layer has a set number of traits (e.g. clothes, hair type, body type, etc.)
Plenty of projects, including Animetas, did the generation of the different traits before uploading them to a decentralized server
Art Blocks took the concept further. The minting transaction hash is used to trigger the generation of the various parts
AI generated art involves the creation of a neural network that has a few billion degrees of freedom
Today, people are creating art using generative adversarial networks (GANs)
GANs have 2 components:
Generator
Discriminator
The generator uses random noise to generate a piece of art
The discriminator has two input options:
A dataset of an abstract art made by humans
Output from the generator
The generator has an optimizer and loss function that allows it to make better pieces to fool the discriminator
“If you think about it [AI generative art], it's like a cat and mouse trying to get better at their job.”
- Cyberh49
Meanwhile, the discriminator gets better at what it does and tells the generator that their art is either genuine or fake
After training the network for some time, it is able to produce Picasso-style art without having seen Picasso at all
Can AI Generation Be On-Chain?
Neural networks are enormous in size. They cannot be uploaded unless someone wants to pay billions of dollars for it
A workaround is to use services that allows users to implement neural networks on a decentralized chain
Process Of Building A Neural Network
When he first started, it was quite difficult for an individual to train a neural network
As technology improves, it has become simpler
To train a neural network, all that is needed is data
There are plenty of examples on GitHub and tutorials to teach users how to train a GAN network
If a user knows how to code, they could get to a level where they can train and build a neural network within a month
Animetas
Created a Python script that randomizes the traits in each layer that Gustavo has made
Afterwards, they made the Animetas image by image
Currently working on a new type of Art Blocks which will be AI generated
Their Roadmap
Planning to release tokens that can be used in their universe to play games, attend events, etc.
Will be releasing hovercars that are tailor made for each Animetas
Planning to add extra features in the metadata for an upcoming racing game and shooter game with the hovercars
A few months ago, they started developing a D&D-like adventure game where Animetas can defeat monsters and get their loot, with some of the loot being NFTs
Will be making a decentralized scoreboard for each Animeta. Users play games and their scores are minted on the blockchain
Higher scores are used to unlock freemium experiences/new games
Will implement a renting function where players can rent Animetas that have unlocked certain games just to play those games
Play-To-Earn Mechanics
Players will gain NFTs from playing the game
Planning to release AniTokens very soon, which is something that can be earned while playing games and be spent on buying weapons and accessories
AniTokens
AniTokens, games, and the scoreboard will be available on Polygon because of their affordability
Their main assets (Animetas, hovercars) will be on Ethereum
Their Approach To Rentals
Owning an asset and becoming part of an exclusive club through gated content
Holders can make money if they hold more than one of the asset and rent it out to someone who wants to access the event
Thought of creating burner characters for people to come and try out their ecosystem. Animetas owners can create those burner characters and rent them out to others for a fee. After a specific duration, these burners characters are then burnt
Will most probably migrate rentals to polygon where it is more affordable
Their Approach To User Generated Content
A lot of the people in their community vibe with their idea
Will be creating a couple of guidelines to help the community come up with user generated content
One guy in their Discord is writing a book about the origin of blockchain zombies. Another member made up a crossover comic strip with his project
Thoughts On AI Generated NFTs And Intelligent NFTs
Thinks that both technologies are cutting edge
This is where decentralization intersects with AI
Horror stories may come true as AI could use the information in the blockchain to learn on their own in an unsupervised manner
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