Your comparison to Deep Dream is quite apt, for good reason that you clearly don't realize-
Deep Dream is an attempt to "enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia"- Pareidolia being a "psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus". So yes, this project is affected by a real life "deep dream".
https://github.com/KamitaniLab/DeepImageReconstruction
Not a hoax.
Your comparison to Deep Dream is quite apt, for good reason that you clearly don't realize-
Deep Dream is an attempt to "enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia"- Pareidolia being a "psychological phenomenon in which the mind responds to a stimulus". So yes, this project is affected by a real life "deep dream".