Artwork generated to convey digital messages, and methods/apparatuses for generating such artwork

A method for producing a code for message signaling through an image, the method employing a deep neural network, the deep neural network having an input, one or more outputs, and plural intermediate layers, each layer of the plural intermediate layers comprising plural filters, each filter of the plural filters characterized by plural parameters that define a response of the each filter to a given input, the method comprising:

• iteratively adjusting an input test image, based on results produced by the plural filters of said neural network, until the input test image adopts both (1) style features from one image, and (2) signal encoding features from a second image;
• and
• outputting an iteratively adjusted input test image, the iteratively adjusted input test image comprising signal-encoding features, in which the signal-encoding features are machine-readable from the iteratively adjusted input test image.

A method comprising:

• receiving a pattern that encodes a plural-symbol payload;
• and
• applying a style to said pattern, using a previously-trained neural network, to produce a stylized output image, the style being based on a style image having various features, wherein the previously-trained neural network adapts features from the style image to express details of the received pattern, to thereby produce an image in which features from the style image contribute to encoding of said plural-symbol payload, wherein the previously-trained neural network is trained to incorporate a digital watermark pattern that encodes a payload into artwork to produce the stylized output image by applying back propagation to adjust filter weights in a neural network according to a first loss function and a second loss function, the first loss function corresponding to a similarity measure between the artwork and artwork incorporating the digital watermark pattern, and the second loss function corresponding to differences between a digital watermark pattern in the artwork and the digital watermark pattern that encodes the payload.