I've been experimenting with getting a tiny circa-2015 recurrent neural network to generate Halloween costumes. Running on a single cat hair-covered laptop, char-rnn has no internet training, but learns from scratch to imitate the data I give it.
A little while ago I revisited a dataset from 2018, over 7100 user-submitted Halloween costumes (3173 with exact duplicates removed). Char-rnn generated some pretty intriguing costumes. But because its training data was old, it was missing out on more recent pop culture. I asked AI Weirdness readers to help submitting more data to bring the neural net up to date, and you delivered! The costume dataset now contains 8362 entries (about 5730 with exact duplicates removed). I trained char-rnn on the updated 2025 dataset and now it ... still doesn't know to complete the phrase "Kpop " with something topical like "Kpop demon hunters".
Kpop dumpster
Kpop and the American cheese
Kpop Assassin
Kpop of Wood
Kpop of Shop
Kpop grocerie
Kpop Egg
Kpop of Halloween worker
It's not the neural network's fault. People submitted individual characters from Kpop Demon Hunters, and even one reference to "K-Pop Demon Hunters" but without internet training to draw from, it doesn't know that any of this is related. It also doesn't know that lowercase and uppercase p are basically the same. To it, "Kpop" and "K-Pop" are as different as "That" and "Treat".
Still, char-rnn is able to build new costumes by moving individual words around from one costume to another, resulting in interesting new characters that you will probably not be able to explain to anyone.
Steve skeleton
Strange Stuff Thor
Roman Scientist
Green Elizabeth
Health Laura
Princess Grandma Chicken
Gus Panther
Glamrock Batman
Spider Fred
Pots's Hair Angel
Jamm the Hedgehog
Grandma Marshmallow
Captain Daggy
Robot Van Ostrich
I picture Jamm the Hedgehog as some kind of early 90s mascot with a surfboard and neon shorts, meant to convince kids that the regional sewer district is cool actually.
I'm not sure how to picture some of these, but these are definitely costumes you could dress as.
A Shunsuit
Inflatable Shadow
Vampire of Liberty
The Chill
Santa Man
Finer Pants
Sexy Swan Mage
Huntress horse
Shower Scientist
Girl Girl
The Grumpy Reveler
Pool Unicorn
Werepants costume
(There were more inflatable costumes submitted this time around, including specifically "Portland Inflatable Frog".)
Quite often char-rnn's costumes made basically no sense at all. I have no idea how you would do most of these.
A potato skeleton
Bride of grocerie
Wild of Dragon
Dragonator
Frog Wig
Sexy 209
King of Thor
Ghost of the Humbun
Bear of Ninja
Fire-brow
ghost concept
Two battery
Hot Shape Devil
Army on the full bun
One thing that didn't go away since 2018 is all the Ruth Bader Ginsburg costumes. For the original dataset someone submitted over 60 unique Ruth Bader Ginsburg costumes (my favorites include Rutabaga Ginsburg, Rock Paper Ginsburg, and Ruth Bader Jarlsberg). As a result, a LOT of the generated costumes were "Ruth Bader Ginsburg" or variations.
Glinda the American Ginsburg
Holy Bear Ginsburg
Smurfy Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Pants
With these handy costume ideas supplied by the power of ridiculously tiny AI, you can attend that party secure in the knowledge that you'll be the only "Ghost of the Humbun" there.
