An artificial intelligence (AI) tool can use brain scans to recreate the images people looked at with eerie accuracy.
The system, called Brain-IT, uses data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure activity in the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual input. A computer model then predicts both the broad layout of an image and high-level information about its content. It then passes those predictions to an AI image generator, researchers explained in a study uploaded to the preprint database arXiv. The research was presented at the ICLR 2026 conference, held April 23-25, and publicized by its authors in September.
