Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Remember Sakana AI ? Almost a year ago, the Tokyo-based startup made a striking appearance on the AI scene with its high-profile founders from Google and a novel automated merging-based approach to developing high-performing models. Today, the company announced two new image-generation models: Evo-Ukiyoe and Evo-Nishikie.
Available on Hugging Face, the models have been designed to generate images from text and image prompts. However, there’s an interesting and unique catch: instead of handling regular image generation in different styles, these models are laser-focused on Japan’s popular historic art form ukiyo-e. It flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries, and Sakana hopes to bring it back to modern content consumers using the power of AI.
The move comes as the latest localization effort in the AI space — something that has grown over the past year, with companies in countries like South Korea , India and China building models tailored to their respective cultures and dialects. Dating back to the early 1600s, Ukiyo-e – or “pictures of the floating world” – evolved as a popular art in Japan focusing on subjects like historical scenes, landscapes, sumo wrestlers, etc. The genre revolved around monochrome woodblock prints but eventually graduated to full-color prints or “nishiki-e” with multiple woodblocks.
Its popularity declin.