AI Hallucinations Rebranded as 'Art' in New Hardware Play
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Thoughtful Things is leveraging the concept of 'latent space' to sell a high-priced AI sampler via Kickstarter.
Music startup Thoughtful Things has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Engram, a sampler and groovebox that markets AI technical failures as a creative feature. Rather than aiming for polished, radio-ready audio, the device is designed to mangle sounds and generate "hallucinations," which founder Evan King describes as a "field recorder for latent space," according to reporting from The Verge.
The device operates locally via a custom-trained "tiny AI" model and does not require an internet connection. Thoughtful Things claims the model was trained exclusively on open datasets licensed for commercial use, such as CC-BY, and asserts that no pirated or stolen data was used. The company intends to open the firmware to allow users to load custom models or tweak the existing ones, drawing inspiration from the practice of circuit bending.
In a demonstration video cited by The Verge, King requests a "piano" sound, resulting in a glitchy, vaguely piano-like output. This experimental approach to sound design comes with a significant price tag: the Kickstarter campaign begins at $675, which is presented as a 30 percent discount. While a final retail price has not been confirmed, The Verge notes it is likely to fall between $850 and $900.