Thanks!
I was surprised when I wasn't forwarded to an existing thread when submitting the URL.
Caves of Qud uses it extensively, its one of the most fun roguelikes that I've played.
Mind blown
why can't this be done with real images?
Mmm real images have a very high number of NxN patterns, and copying images with large structures won't work out well when only considering local similarity?
The time and memory complexity are pretty severe with this method.