Creative artificial intelligence set to inspire girls about STEM
FEIT alumna Marita Cheng’s career has gone from strength to strength. Named ‘Young Australian of the Year’ in 2012, Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016, and becoming the youngest Member of the Order of Australia in 2019, Ms Cheng is a dynamo with a passion for science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM).
Ms Cheng has now published a book using generative artificial intelligence (AI) art to inspire girls into STEM. She generated 10,400 images for the 42-page book but only used a very small portion of those images for the final product. The book is the world's first children's book memoir to use generative AI.
Smart Girl Books: Marita Cheng tells the story of Ms Cheng’s life, to inspire young girls to be courageous, take initiative and achieve their aspirations. It follows her youth growing up near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, through to her founding Robogals, building robots and establishing the robotics company Aubot.
“I spent a lot of time editing the images in the book and making it just right. I’m proud to share stories to inspire girls about STEM, to be gritty, courageous, creative and passionate,” said Ms Cheng.
In January 2021, OpenAI announced DALL-E, a new state-of-the-art algorithm to create an image from just a text description. The world took notice in August 2022 when Stability AI released its model, data and code as open source, allowing anyone to use the technology and build new experiences.
“I was really curious about this new technology coming out, and wanted to work on a project with it, to experiment and learn more,” Ms Cheng said.
Because of the limited control over these "text to image" technologies, there is no straightforward method to ensure that the characters in each image look the same. Ms Cheng tackled this challenge by using text input to construct a single character in a variety of positions. She first cut out each character to use in various settings. She then took various background images and composited them together, overlaying her cut-out character on top of them.
Ms Cheng predicted that she could complete the book in only one day. It ultimately took eight months. Numerous text drafts were created, and months were spent on generating the images, title and cover page.
Ms Cheng graduated from the University of Melbourne in 2013 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechatronics and Computer Science. During her university years, she founded Robogals with the goal of increasing the number of female STEM students and providing leadership opportunities for female engineering students.
Founded in 2018, Robogals inspires young women to pursue STEM jobs and tertiary studies. The organisation has already taught over 120,000 girls robotics across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan and other countries. Through robotics workshops, career seminars and a variety of community events, Robogals introduces young women to engineering.
Ms Cheng now heads Aubot, a robotics company that is creating an 8-degree-of-freedom robotic arm on a mobile platform to help disabled people at home. It develops the telepresence robot, Teleport, for children with cancer in hospitals to attend school, persons with disabilities to attend work, and for seniors to socialise.
‘Smart Girl Books: Marita Cheng’ is now available to purchase on Amazon: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/iz2s
Find out more here: https://maritacheng.com/book.html