This tool uses the Google Cloud Machine Learning API and Tensorflow.

Generative Machine Learning on the Cloud is a cloud based tool to aid in generative art and synthetic image generation. The end to end system design allows a user to have a custom dataset of images to train a Variational Autoencoder Generative Adversarial Network (VAE-GAN) model on Cloud ML. From here, their model is deployed to the cloud, where they can input an embedding to have synthetic images generated from their dataset or input an image to get an embedding vector.

1. Install Tensorflow
   • Really recommend doing the virtualenv install
   • Verify numpy is installed
2. Set Up the Cloud Environment
   • Create a Cloud Platform Project
   • Enable Billing
   • Enable Cloud ML Engine and Compute Engine APIs
3. Clone this repo
   • If using a TensorFlow virtualenv, make sure to clone into a subdirectory of the virtualenv directory

A training job will train the VAE-GAN on your own training data!

Important: You will be using billable components of the Cloud Platform and will incur charges when running a training job.

1. cd into the data directory of the source code you just cloned. Make sure to activate the tensorflow virtualenv (if that is the method you chose to install TensorFlow).

2. Run the training script
   
   Dataset Tips:

   • Read how Cloud ML interacts with the data.
   • Accepted image formats: .jpg or .png
   • The larger your image set, the less chance of overfitting!
   • One rule of thumb is at least ~1000 images per class.
     • If you are trying to synthesize faces, try to have at least 1000 face images.
     • If you are trying to generate both cat and dog images, try to have at least 1000 cats and 1000 dogs.
   • The model will crop / resize your images to 64x64 squares.
     • Use the -c flag to specify centered cropping (or else it will random crop).
     • The image is cropped to a bounding box of side lengths of minimum(original_height, original_width).
     • The image is resized to 64x64 (using tf.image.resize_images to either downsample or upsample using bilinear interpolation).
   • This script will turn your image files into TFRecords file format with Example protos and saves them to your GCS bucket. It partitions your data into a training dataset and a validation dataset.
   • For efficient throughput, image files should not exceed 4 MB. Reducing image size can increase throughput.

   Example:

   sh run_training.sh -d $PATH_TO_TRAINING_DIR -c

   Flags:
   [-d PATH_TO_TRAINING_DIR] : required, supplies image directory of .jpg or .png images
   [-c] : optional, if present images will be center-cropped, if absent images will be randomly cropped.
   [-p] : optional, port on which to start TensorBoard instance.

3. Monitor your training job using the TensorBoard you started or the Cloud dashboard

   • TensorBoard: Starts at http://0.0.0.0:6006 by default, unless port specified.
   • Job Logs: http://console.cloud.google.com -> Big Data -> ML Engine -> Jobs

Now that we have a trained model saved on GCS, lets deploy it on Cloud ML!

1. cd into the data directory of the source code.

2. Run create model script (if you don't know your job name, use the -l flag)
   Example:

    sh create_model.sh -j $JOB_NAME

   Flags:
   [-j JOB_NAME] : required unless -l flag present, supplies job name
   [-l]: optional, if present lists 10 most recent jobs created by user

3. Look at your deployed model on the cloud dashboard under Cloud ML Engine!

   • Model: http://console.cloud.google.com -> Big Data -> ML Engine -> Models

Now that we have a deployed model trained with your own data, we can use it to generate new samples.

1. Generate an Image!

   • I've provided a script to randomly generate an image from your model and display it:

      sh generate_image.sh -m $MODEL_NAME

     Flags:
     [-m MODEL_NAME] : required unless -l flag present, specifies model to generate image.
     [-l] : optional, if present lists all models associated with user.
     [-d TEMP_DIR] : optional, directory to which to write json file.

   • Assumes PIL is installed

     $pip install Pillow

2. Embedding to Image generation

   • Use the command line & a json file!

     • Example format:

       json format -- list truncated to length 4 instead of 100:
       {"embeddings": [5,10,-1.6,7.8], "key": "0"}

     • Embedding array must have dimension of 100 (if using current vae-gan) or whatever was specified in the code:

       model.py:32 EMBEDDING_SIZE = 100

     • Example command:

       gcloud ml-engine predict --model $MODEL_NAME --json-instances $JSON_FILE

   • Batch Prediction Job

     • Example format:

       json format example -- embedding lists truncated to length 9:
       
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,0,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "0"}
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,1,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "1"}
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,2,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "2"}
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,3,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "3"}
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,4,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "4"}
       {"embeddings": [0.1,2.3,-4.6,6.5,5,4.4,-0.9,-0.9,2.2], "key": "5"}

     • Json file must be on GCS

     • Example command:

       gcloud ml-engine jobs submit prediction $JOB_NAME --model
       $MODEL_NAME --input-paths "gs://BUCKET/request.json" --output-path
       "gs://BUCKET/output" --region us-east1 --data-format "TEXT"

   • Use python API

     • Documentation here

     • Setup project and execute request

       credentials = GoogleCredentials.get_application_default()
       ml = discovery.build('ml', 'v1', credentials=credentials)
       request_dict = {'instances': [{'embeddings': embeds.tolist(), 'key': '0'}]}
       request = ml.projects().predict(name=model_name, body=request_dict)
       response_image = request.execute()

3. Image to Embedding generation

   • Use the command line & a json file!

     • Image has to be base64 encoded jpeg

     • Example format:

       json format:
       {"image_bytes": {"b64":"/9j/4AAQSkZJAAQABX...zW0=="}, "key": "0"}

   • Batch Prediction

     • Same as for embedding to image, but with image format json

   • Python API

     • Same as for embedding to image, but request_dict:

       request_dict = {'instances': [{'image_bytes': {'b64': img}, 'key': '0'}]}

       Where img is a base64 encoded jpeg

Huge shoutout to this awesome DCGAN. After much trial error, the architecture from this network was the one that produced the greatest generative results and ended up as the network architecture in the final version of this tool.

This is not an official Google product.