It's a bit complicated but each tile has its own "AI" to determine what to do. I had no idea what Cellular automata was but at a quick glance it seems like its somewhat familiar as to how mine works.
Wow, really? That's impressive! And unexpected. So, I assume that the various colors have an AI and when a certain color, say white, is detected, it will automatically assign the AI to that color? And then just repeat that for the whole map?