Why do we sometimes perceive static images as if they were moving? Visual motion illusions enjoy a sustained popularity, yet there is no definitive answer to the question of why they work. Here we present evidence in favor of the hypothesis that illusory motion is a side effect of the predictive abilities of the brain. We present a generative model, the Evolutionary Illusion GENerator (EIGen), that creates new visual motion illusions based on a video predictive neural network. We confirm that the constructed illusions are effective on human participants through a psychometric survey. Our results support the hypothesis that illusory motion might be the consequence of perceiving the brain's own predictions rather than perceiving raw visual input from the eyes. The philosophical motivation of this paper is to call attention to the untapped potential of "motivated failures", ways for artificial systems to fail as biological systems fail, as a worthy outlet for Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life research.

翻译：为何我们有时会将静态图像感知为动态？视觉运动错觉长期以来备受关注，但其作用机制尚无定确定论。本文提出证据支持以下假说：错觉运动是大脑预测能力的副产品。我们提出一种生成模型——进化错觉生成器（EIGen），该模型基于视频预测神经网络创造新的视觉运动错觉。通过心理测量学实验，我们证实所构建的错觉对人类参与者具有显著效应。研究结果支持以下假说：错觉运动可能是大脑感知自身预测结果而非眼睛原始视觉输入的产物。本文的哲学动机在于呼吁关注“动机性失效”——即人工系统以生物系统相似方式失效的机制——作为人工智能与人工生命研究中尚未开发的潜在研究方向。