This is My Face on AI...
From Ugly Photo to Weird Video
I took the hi-res photo and made an AI video out of it. See below.
You will notice a few things right away: The darling pattern of sun damage to my skin is wiped away. My skin is also delightfully smooth and there are no dark circles under my eyes. The blackheads on my nose are gone.
Now Christine, you might be saying, photo-to-video AI products can’t handle manipulation of hi-res images. You would be right. That means when you see one, you know it CANNOT be AI.
But this is only the beginning, my little apple dumplings.
There is a little grid pattern on my nose, but I think that comes from using a phone to record the AI-generated photo on my computer screen. I need to figure out how to insert that code into an API. But not tonight.
As the four second video plays, you will see I have no mouth as I turn my head upwards. Tears form in my eyes which start to become misshapen.
Maybe this is being a little bit nitpicking, but the fine facial hair on my nose and the sides of my face are pronounced, and seem to be caked in makeup foundation, as can be seen on people who are too fond of facial powder.
Actually, I am giving you a break. You should have seen the OTHER AI video of my face, based on the same photograph. Wow. Just wow.
Let’s Talk Strategy…
I suspect that the little AI-generating engines that create videos from photos can only handle a limited numbers of things on your face: eyes, nose, beauty mark, nostrils - you know, the big stuff. The thing is, to be recognizable, the proportions between the things on your face - let’s call them features - have to remain constant. It is that geometry that allows for facial recognition software.
It is also the weakness in a computer-generated image.
My natural face, unpainted, has many little marks on it. That may not seem like a lot to remember, but the computer also has to calculate the proportion of every little freckle to every other freckle and blemish and feature. Not to say it can’t be done, but that’s more computing power than is going to be available to most developers.
The idea I want to test is whether or not details will break AI. Providing an AI with a photo of a face that has all the little marks and splotches visible is going to be too much for it to work well. I think. So far.
Two Insights
A high-resolution video is not AI-generated.
A video of someone without makeup is not AI-generated. We will discuss the implication of this factoid in another article.