MyHertiage’s Deep Nostalgia tool uses the power of artificial intelligence and D-ID to animate people in old family photos, enabling them to blink, move their heads, and even smile. Since launching just 5 weeks ago, 72 million animations have been created on the site. The animations are based on different sequences of gestures that can be applied to a photo, each originating from a pre-recorded driver video prepared in advance using MyHeritage employees. They launched with 10 such drivers, and today, that number has been doubled. Read more for a video and additional information.
Don’t you hate the picture breaking up when making video calls? This issue could be caused by the heavy bandwidth demands of the video conferencing app, but even with a powerful desktop computer or a low-end phone or tablet, it all comes down to how fast your internet connection is. “One-Shot Free-View Neural Talking-Head Synthesis for Video Conferencing” by NVIDIA researchers aim to solve this issue with AI-based video compression technology. Read more for a video and additional information.
Sophia, the AI-powered humanoid robot by Hanson Robotics, recently sold an NFT (non-fungible token) portrait for $688,888 USD. For those new to NFTs, it’s basically a unit of data on a digital ledger called a blockchain, where each one represent a unique digital item, thus making them unique. Access to the original file, tracked on their underlying blockchains, is restricted to the owner of the token, while only the digital files themselves are reproducible. Read more for a video and additional information.
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation built Elektro at its Mansfield, Ohio facility between 1937 and 1938. Standing 7-feet-tall and weighing 265 pounds, this humanoid robot could walk by voice command, speak around 700 words via a 78-rpm record player, blow up balloons, move his head / arms, and even smoke cigarettes. His body consisted of a steel gear, cam and motor skeleton covered by an aluminum skin. Read more to travel back in time to an AI-enhanced 1939 New York World’s Fair where it was showcased.
We have seen the future of dating apps, and they’ll all be AI-powered. Why? Researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) measurements to identify what kind of facial features people found to be attractive, and then uploaded the data to an artificial intelligence program, or a generative adversarial neural network (GAN). This program then familiarized itself with the types of faces individual people found desirable, and then synthesized new ones tailored exactly to their preferences. Read more for a video and additional information.
At first glance, this actor may actually be able to convince people on social media that it’s actually Tom Cruise, but upon closer inspection, you’ll realize it’s just a very realistic deepfake. The voice acting is almost near perfect, although some parts aren’t properly synced. Where artificial intelligence really shines is the face tracking and lighting, which appear to be immaculate, except for some parts when a pair of sunglasses are removed. Read more for a video compilation.
Remember those animated paintings you saw on the walls in Harry Potter’s school? Well, MyHertiage’s DeepNostalgia tool does something similar to the faces in just about any old photo. The technology behind this tool was developed by Israeli firm D-ID, powered by artificial intelligence algorithms trained on pre-recorded videos of living people moving their faces and gesturing. This means you can bring historical figures, like Queen Victoria, Florence Nightingale, and more, to life. Read more for two videos and additional information.
During the 1920s, Paris was the capital of the arts, a time period known as les années folles (the crazy years), with writers Ernest Hemingway, W.B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound moving to the city of lights. It was also the home and studio of Pablo Picasso, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Amedeo Modigliani, Marcel Duchamp, Maurice Utrillo, Alexander Calder, Kees Van Dongen, and Alberto Giacometti. For those who’ve wondered what daily life was like, AI-powered neural networks has upscaled and colorized a short film from this time period for your enjoyment. Read more for the video and additional information.
H/T: PetaPixel
Google researchers have revealed their updated NeRF-W (Neural Radiance Fields in the Wild) algorithm, which basically creates detailed 3D models of locations around the world by using the reference data from 2D tourists’ photos. This algorithm can also remove unwanted objects and normalize the lighting conditions so they look as natural as possible. Nerf-W is applied to internet photo collections of famous landmarks and the resulting 3D models are even more photo-realistic than in the actual images. Read more for a video and additional information.
“Never Gonna Give You Up”, released on 27 July 1987, is the debut single recorded by English singer and songwriter Rick Astley. In the past decade, it has become an internet meme called “rickrolling,” which involves an unexpected appearance of the music video. The use of this song as a meme dates back to 2006, but didn’t gain worldwide popularity until March 2007, when the first trailer for the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV was released onto Rockstar Games website. Read more to see this music video remastered by AI in 4K and 60FPS.