Another surprise that has long perplexed researchers is those algorithms’ knack for their own, strange kind of creativity. This is the “paradox” behind diffusion models, said Giulio Biroli, an AI researcher and physicist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris: “If they worked perfectly, they should just memorize,” he said. “But they don’t—they’re actually able to produce new samples.”To generate images, diffusion models use a process known as denoising. Now two physicists have made a startling claim: It’s the technical imperfections in the denoising process itself that leads to the creativity of diffusion models. By illuminating the black box of diffusion models, the new research could have big implications for future AI research—and perhaps even for our understanding of human creativity.