563: Chapter 558 Let AIs Compete Against Each Other?

The elevator doors closed behind him, cutting off the clamor from the private room in Hanhai Tower.

That liveliness belonged to them.

It did not belong to Shen Yan.

Chen Guangke stood beside him, smelling the faint lingering scent of alcohol in the elevator.

"These geniuses from the ivory tower really do need you to knock some sense into them sometimes."

"Knocking sense into them once is enough."

Shen Yan's tone was flat, revealing no emotion.

"If there's a next time, it won't be a dinner invitation; it'll be an invitation to leave."

Chen Guangke grinned and didn't say anything more.

He understood Shen Yan.

Shen Yan could tolerate technical failure, but he could not tolerate internal organizational friction.

That meal was a reconciliation banquet, but also a Hongmen Banquet.

The crisis was only truly averted the moment Engineer He and Ben shook hands.

After the internal divide within the 'Dawn' project was smoothed over, the efficiency of the entire laboratory improved significantly.

Over the next few days, Shen Yan stayed at the company to handle the backlog of affairs.

The new round of financing on An Ran's side had been finalized, and the funds were about to arrive.

Ning Ke also brought good news; he had made a connection with a European lithography machine parts supplier. Although they weren't the top tier, they were enough to meet the urgent need.

Everything was moving in a positive direction.

Until he clicked on the Finance Department report of another Branch Company under the group.

janus Studio.

This was one of the projects Shen Yan had started with, a software focused on AI-generated art, and one of the group's stable cash cows.

But in the last three months, the revenue growth curve had clearly slowed down, even showing signs of a decline.

The speed at which money was coming in had slowed.

Shen Yan tapped the screen lightly and closed the report.

He picked up the internal phone.

"Book me the earliest flight to T City."

T City International Airport.

The air was thick with the humid scent of the ocean.

Shen Yan walked out of the VIP channel and was about to call a car.

A black NIO ET9 glided silently to a stop in front of him.

The window rolled down, revealing a capable face that held a hint of surprise.

It was Wu Ya.

She was wearing a well-tailored beige suit skirt today, with her long hair tied up, looking both professional and efficient.

"President Shen."

Shen Yan opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, a faint scent of gardenia wafting around his nose.

"How did you know I'd arrive at this time?"

Wu Ya explained while smoothly starting the car.

"Guang Ke mentioned it."

"He said you might be coming for a surprise inspection and told me to be prepared."

Shen Yan smiled and leaned back against the seat.

"It seems my surprise attack is no longer a secret."

The car merged into the endless flow of traffic.

Shen Yan watched the street scenery receding rapidly outside the window and didn't speak again.

Wu Ya glanced at him in the rearview mirror, seeing only a calm profile.

She knew that beneath the calm, a storm was often brewing.

janus Studio was the large luxury apartment Shen Yan had bought from Wang Haidong.

The two walked into the office area and immediately felt the unique, busy atmosphere characteristic of creative workers.

The tapping of keyboards, the friction of digital tablets, and the hushed discussions were all interwoven.

But Shen Yan keenly sensed a lingering trace of anxiety amidst the busyness.

Wu Ya led him to a completely transparent glass conference room.

"President Shen, please have a seat. I'll gather the core project team for a meeting immediately."

She turned and left, acting with swift decisiveness.

Soon, seven or eight young people filed in; they were the technical backbone of janus Studio.

Seeing Shen Yan, everyone's face showed a bit of awkwardness and tension.

Wu Ya was the last to walk in, holding a tablet.

"President Shen, this is our third-quarter project report."

The report began.

From new users and daily active users to community feedback, every piece of data was impeccable.

The project lead spoke until his throat was dry, trying to use these beautiful surface-level statistics to cover up the core issue.

Shen Yan listened quietly, his finger unconsciously tracing the glass tabletop.

Until the other person finished speaking.

The entire conference room fell into a brief silence.

Shen Yan looked up, his gaze sweeping over everyone present before finally landing on Wu Ya.

"Revenue."

He only said one word.

"Why has the revenue growth over the last three months slowed down?"

This question was like a scalpel, precisely cutting through all the sugar-coated peace.

The air in the conference room froze instantly.

Wu Ya's face turned slightly pale.

She hadn't expected Shen Yan to skip the pleasantries and go straight for the jugular.

She took a deep breath and opened another encrypted file on the tablet.

"President Shen, we've hit a bottleneck."

"janus's core algorithm, which we call the 'Kaleidoscope Engine', has encountered a phenomenon of 'aesthetic convergence' when generating images."

She projected several AI-generated paintings onto the large screen.

"User novelty is declining. Simply put, our AI has started to repeat itself."

"It learned how to create the most popular works and then continuously copied that success model. This has resulted in the newly generated content becoming increasingly cookie-cutter."

"We've tried adjusting weights and introducing new learning samples, but the results haven't been ideal. The engine seems to be stuck in an optimal solution loop that it can't escape from."

The project leads lowered their heads in shame.

This was the root of their anxiety.

Their 'money-printing machine' was about to rust.

Shen Yan stared at the paintings on the screen for a long time in silence.

"Your thinking is wrong."

He finally spoke.

"You're teaching a painter how to paint, but you've forgotten that a painter also needs inspiration."

He stood up and walked to the screen.

"You're treating it as a single super-brain, but no matter how strong a brain is, it will still have fixed mindsets."

"Why can't it be a group of brains?"

Everyone looked at each other, not understanding what he meant.

Shen Yan took a marker and drew a large circle on the whiteboard.

"This is your current 'Kaleidoscope Engine'."

Then, inside the circle, he drew hundreds of densely packed small dots.

"Starting today, disband 'Kaleidoscope'."

"We are going to establish a brand-new ecosystem. I call it the 'Zhenge Protocol'."

His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an unquestionable power.

"Step one: 'Gene-Gridization'."

"Decompose all known art styles—from brushstrokes, colors, and composition to light and shadow—into the most basic 'Style Genes', and build a massive gene library. Not one, but ten thousand, a hundred thousand."

"Step two: 'Swarmification'."

"We no longer need a single super AI; we need thousands of small AIs. Each one will be an independent 'painter'. Randomly assign them different combinations of 'Style Genes' to form their own unique 'aesthetic preferences'."

"Some might like Van Gogh's wildness, some might prefer Monet's haziness, and some can even combine styles that humans have never seen before."

"Step three, and the most crucial step: 'Adversarial Generation'."

"Let this group of AI 'painters' compete against each other."