One of the most powerful (and controversial) technologies of recent years surprises us again, allowing us to see how, if we had the necessary knowledge, it could have run on hardware from over 40 years ago . And it is possible to adapt the Generative AI on virtually any device, we saw how it worked with Excel, but now we can also see how it works on a Commodore 64which offers extremely limited power.
In recent months we have seen the trend of trying to apply or use generative artificial intelligence from any type of platform complex enough to allow the programming of a system similar to those we have seen in this technology. Although one of the biggest new things we can see is that if this technology had been developed forty years ago, developers and others could have been using it practically since the first personal computers came out.
AI reinvented, this is how it works on an old computer
From the start it is worth noting that obviously the power that such an old device can offer is extremely limited, so we cannot expect it to allow us to create images with 8K resolution in a matter of seconds , obviously it takes more time and the images it creates are practically pixels. Nevertheless, it is truly curious and striking how it is possible to apply such advanced technology as artificial intelligence to a device that is currently surpassed even by low-performance systems like the Raspberry Pi.
The creator of this Generative AI For Commodore 64, Nick Bild, allows us free access to his project via GitHub, indicating that the only thing he actually used to develop it was the computer itself as well as the programming knowledge necessary to make this creation. From the beginning, he presents it as a research project, since, according to what he indicates, what led him to carry it out was the curiosity to know how cutting-edge technology like generative AI would have worked on oldest computers that came on the market.
Obviously, as you would expect, the performance leaves a lot to be desired, since in the end it is a device that even in its time had just enough power to do certain calculations and nothing else, but it is when even surprising that we can apply current technology to a device from the past. In terms of speed, generating an image can take practically 20 minutes, what we could imagine is generating something with extremely high resolution, which gives us spectacular quality of detail with a minimum resolution of 4K.
But this is not the case, the generated image is literally a handful of pixels, since it is only capable of generating images in which we can clearly differentiate each of the images used. Nick Bild indicates that this project can be used to generate elf of retro games, that is, an original character with all its possible movements, although it is clear that seeing which pixels it is and how long it takes to Commodore 64 By generating the image it is much faster to draw them by hand.
