Can artificial intelligence design and generate a chair?

The project Lost In Diffusion by artist / coder and engineer Kasper Jordaens, is an attempt to better understand the role of algorithms and AI models in relation to a museum collection. AI has proven supportive in turning archival data into accessible, interconnected, and intelligible information. However, its potential in “generating” new data in meaningful ways is a domain largely left untapped. Given access to our collection database, containing both metadata and images on the design objects represented in the collection of the museum, Kasper Jordaens (re-)trained a diffusion model¹ in an attempt to make the machine understand not only the intricacies of design, as defined through the (diffuse) scope of the collection, but also to generate a model that could potentially act as a co-agent, next to the designer, in the process of design.

¹A diffusion model is a type of machine learning algorithm that learns to create data (like images or text) by gradually.

What do you see in the image above?