Artificial imagination also called Synthetic imagination or machine imagination is defined as artificial simulation of human

Human

Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...

 imagination

Imagination

Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability of forming mental images, sensations and concepts, in a moment when they are not perceived through sight, hearing or other senses...

 by general or special purpose computers or artificial neural networks.

The term artificial imagination is also used to describe a property of machines or programs

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

: Among some of the traits that researchers hope to simulate using machines include creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

, vision, digital art

Digital art

Digital art is a general term for a range of artistic works and practices that use digital technology as an essential part of the creative and/or presentation process...

, humor, satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

, etc.

Artificial imagination research uses tools and insights from many fields, including computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, Rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

, psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, creative arts

Creative Arts

Creative arts is the term used to describe different types of art. Specifically, to introduce fine art ideas, techniques, skills and media. It is generally used as an umbrella for Dramaturgy, Music , Graphic Arts/Cartooning, Performing Arts, Film and Publishing, Galleries and Museums and the Visual...

, philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

, affective computing

Affective computing

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science...

, Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

, Artificial intuition

Artificial intuition

Artificial intuition is the capacity for an artifice to function with intuition, a machine-based system that has some capacity to function analogous to human intuition.-Comparison:...

, cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, linguistics

Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective....

, operations research

Operations research

Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations...

, creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

, probability

Probability

Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

 and logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

.

The various practitioners in the field are researching various aspects of Artificial imagination, such as Artificial (visual) imagination,
Artificial (aural) Imagination, modeling/filtering content based on human emotions and Interactive Search. Some articles on the topic speculate on how artificial imagination may evolve to create an artificial world

Artificial world

Writers in the fields of science speculation and fiction have created in their works several varieties of artificial worlds.Such megastructures could have a variety of advantages over natural planets, such as efficient use of solar energy and immense living space, but their construction and/or...

 which people may not want to leave at all.
.

Some researchers in the field, such as G. Schleis and M. Rizki, Dept. of Comput. Sci., Wayne State Univ. have focused on using artificial neural networks

Neural Networks

Neural Networks is the official journal of the three oldest societies dedicated to research in neural networks: International Neural Network Society, European Neural Network Society and Japanese Neural Network Society, published by Elsevier...

 for simulating artificial imagination.

The topic of artificial imagination has gotten interest from scholars outside the computer science domain, such as noted teacher-scholar Earnest G Bormann, a remarkable teacher-scholar, who came up with the Symbolic Convergence Theory

Symbolic Convergence Theory

Symbolic convergence theory is a general communication theory that offers an explanation for the appearance of a group consciousness, consisting of shared emotions, motives, and meanings . SCT explains that meanings, emotions, values, and the motives for action are in the rhetoric co-created by...

 and has worked on a project to develop artificial imagination in computer systems.

How to Build a Mind: Toward Machines with Imagination by Igor Aleksander

Igor Aleksander

Igor Aleksander FREng is an emeritus professor of Neural Systems Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London...

is a good book on the topic.

And of course, the popular press is catching the term as well.