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Thought Robots Taking Down the Internet Was Scary? Take a Look at This...

After seeing the artificially intelligent "Nightmare Machine" created by M.I.T. researchers, you may never look at Clinton or Trump the same way.
MIT's "Nightmare Machine" uses algorithms to generate horror imagery.
MIT's "Nightmare Machine" uses algorithms to generate horror imagery.MIT

After seeing the artificially intelligent "Nightmare Machine" created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you'll likely never look at this year's presidential election the same way again.

Just in time for Halloween, the brains at MIT released the terrifying new tool that explores the question of whether machines can scare us.

The answer: You bet they can.

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Using a series of algorithms, the nightmare machine spits out haunting photos of familiar faces and places — with an evil twist.

Check out the image created by the Nightmare Machine showing the moment Donald Trump lurked behind Hillary Clinton during the second presidential debate.

The Nightmare Machine gets scarier with help from humans, who are asked to vote on which images are the scariest. This feedback then allows the algorithm to adjust, creating even more spooky stuff.

Even Lady Liberty doesn't look as welcoming after she's been put through the Nightmare Machine.

We've seen other unintentionally scary AI projects. Last year, Google's networks churned out some trippy images, showing knights with dog heads and a bizarre pig snail hybrid.

While Google's credo is "don't be evil," the researchers at MIT said they had fear in mind for their project.

"Since centuries, across geographies, religions, and cultures people try to innovate ways of scaring each other," the team's website says. "Creating a visceral emotion such as fear remains one of the cornerstones of human creativity. This challenge is especially important in a time where we wonder what the limits of Artificial Intelligence are: Can machines learn to scare us?"

We'll let you answer that last question.