AI in Digital Arts, Game Dev & Entertainment #1

We like to invite you to the first event of our brand new community, supported by Flanders Game Hub, Howest, & Datameister.

The first edition is hosted at the Boldhouse, Sint-Baafsplein 10, Gent

Speakers:
- Glenn van Waesberghe (Howest DAE): Text-to-Image: Deep Dive
Text-to-image AI technology has become a hot topic of conversation for the last few years. Ever wondered how this technology actually works? Or how it came to be? In this entry-level talk, we'll take a closer look at some of the underlying technology that makes text-to-image work, and how anyone can get started with it, and use it as a powerful tool in their toolbox.

Glenn is a researcher at Howest DAE tasked with continuously digesting all AI advances out there and providing these knowledge nuggets to the industry and a wider audience.

- Ruben Verhack (Datameister): AI-Driven Breakthroughs in Image-Based Rendering: Light Fields, SMoE, Gaussian Splatting, NeRFs and beyond
In a previous life, Ruben was a researcher in the field of virtual reality for camera-captured content. Basically: being able to virtually walk through camera-captured scenes, or to reuse scanned real-life objects in 3D virtual scenes. Ruben contributed many papers in the field that really advanced the state-of-the-art, receiving multiple awards. In those early days, there were still many issues to work out. Fast forward into the age of the AI revolution and many of the show-stopper issues are now being tackled at an amazing pace. In this talk, an overview will be given of the current AI-driven breakthroughs in image-based rendering as well as how the techniques relate to each other.

Ruben is one of the founders of Datameister, a deep-tech AI innovation company that develops and hosts algorithms in the domains of computer vision, computer graphics, and natural language processing.

- Wim Vanhenden (Tool of North America): Generative AI at Tool of North America

*In this talk, Wim will address how they approach AI in the context of advertising. Tool of North America is a US-based creative production partner that conceives, creates, and executes award-winning advertising and marketing for the world's bravest brands and advertising agencies. Their latest work for Under Armour received a lot of praise and criticism: https://toolofna.com/work/experience/forever-is-made-now/*

Wim is a local creative hero known for founding pioneering Ghent-based digital agencies such as Little Miss Robot and Nocomputer. He is currently the Technical Director at Tool of North America (USA). Fun fact for millenials: Wim also used to be Janez Detd's guitarist.

LAST MINUTE CHANGE: Wim Vanhenden will be replaced by his good friend and collaborator on the Under Armour campaign Vince Buyssens (of Starhaven). Vince guides teams in the age of AI, his creative consultancy Starhaven helps brands align their talent with the transformative power of AI. He's truly one of Belgium's pioneering talent in applying generative AI to his creative process.