Do you know the planaria? This small animal is capable of regenerating any part of its body, even if it is split in half, each part will result in a complete organism. This incredible regenerative ability has fascinated scientists for years and it is hoped that it may one day be applied to human health. But what if our computers could do the same? Well, don't cut your computer in half and get two, rather, what if we had algorithms with regenerative abilities? Well, no longer have to wait, this cellular automata is implemented with a neural network, which allows it to generate and regenerate images from a single pixel, at first it does not seem like much, that is, we can program a robot and make it paint the same thing over and over again, the important thing here is that the algorithm has learned it by itself and being far above any programmed robot, we can mutilate the image and still the algorithm will regenerate it and not because it knows what the image is like , but because the pixels work as cells and depending on the pixels that surround them, each pixel will grow independently to regenerate the image. This type of algorithm will allow us to better study how the regenerative capacities of other animals work and we may find more extravagant uses for them. Can you imagine that one day we can build self-regenerating biorobots?
Link to original work: https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/