Halloween is just around the corner, so what better way to celebrate than by getting artificial intelligence (AI) to create some horrific masks.

That’s what Matt Reed, who works for creative agency Red Pepper in Tennessee, has done. He posted on Twitter some of his rather horrific designs, including, uh, “pirate JFK” and “Trump nugget”.

To create them, he used what’s called a generative adversarial network (GAN) to recognize patterns in data such as Halloween masks – Reed fed his computer thousands. The AI then tried to create its own that would fit the pattern, supposedly getting better over time.

“What’s so scary or unsettling about it is that it’s not so detailed that it shows you everything,” Reed told New Scientist. “It leaves just enough open for your imagination to connect the dots.”

He noted that he’d tried the project in September, but the “results were terrible”. But it looks like he’s finally cracked it, and now there are some true monstrosities to behold.

If this post has got you in a Halloween mood, then we’ve got you covered. Just yesterday, we reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was, uh, cancelling Halloween for chickens. We’ll explain.

We also recently discussed what Americans were most afraid of in 2018 – and the top spot might not be too surprising. And did you hear about the Burger King burger that would give you nightmares?

Now thankfully, with Halloween fast approaching, you can genuinely strike fear into others with some creepy AI masks. What will those pesky robots do next, eh.

(H/T: New Scientist)