If you want to experiment with this technology today, here is a simple workflow using open-source tools:
Before we explore the "CA" (Cenerated/AI) aspect, we need to understand the container. A TrueType Font (TTF) is a digital font standard developed by Apple and Microsoft in the late 1980s. Unlike its predecessor (PostScript Type 1), TTF contains both the screen and printer font data in a single file. It relies on quadratic Bezier curves to describe every glyph (character) in a typeface.
For thirty years, designing a TTF required immense human labor: sketching, vectorizing, kerning, hinting, and compiling. That process, which once took months, is now being compressed into minutes by CAGenerated systems.
In 2023, a developer known as "LucidBezier" released Cortex Sans. He did not draw a single anchor point. Instead, he trained a GAN on 10,000 open-source fonts, then used a genetic algorithm to "evolve" the most readable letterforms.
Cortex Sans was downloaded 500,000 times in one month. The reaction was split:
The controversy highlighted the core tension of CAGenerated TTFs: efficiency versus craft.
Hinting is the instruction set that tells a screen how to pixelate a curve. Most CAGenerated TTFs lack proper hinting, resulting in blurry text on low-resolution monitors or e-ink displays.
