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Computer-generated photos: artificial yes, intelligent no

David Lee
30.9.2019
Translation: machine translated

Software has artificially generated 100,000 portrait photos. They can be downloaded free of charge. This is one thing above all: funny.

Recently, a report about 100,000 freely available portrait photos made the rounds on various news portals. What's special about this is that the photos have been put together by software, so they are not of real people.

In other words: artificial intelligence! You can now generate people on a computer! Robots will soon take over the world! And then comes the Singularity, the zombie apocalypse, the Third World War, the Last Judgement and so on... So it's a perfect opportunity for the media to scare people a little.

Unfortunately, all the excitement falls apart as soon as you actually look at these photos.

It's impressive what's possible with AI today.
It's impressive what's possible with AI today.

The pictures are so bad they give me fits of laughter. About one in five people are squinting, the backgrounds are just plain broken, and it looks especially bad when there's another face in the photo.

Small imperfections make a person endearing and natural.
Small imperfections make a person endearing and natural.
Certainly some style trend I missed.
Certainly some style trend I missed.
Thanks to AI, Mortimer (left in the picture) has finally found his dream woman.
Thanks to AI, Mortimer (left in the picture) has finally found his dream woman.

I see it positively: These photos cannot be used for fake profiles on dating portals. They can't actually be used for anything at all. Except for amusement. Finally, you can laugh at people who look crazy, because they're not people.

I'd swipe left on Tinder, because it's obviously not real.
I'd swipe left on Tinder, because it's obviously not real.
Haha, finally laughing at children to your heart's content!
Haha, finally laughing at children to your heart's content!

It's fun to surf through the 100,000 photos - because no matter how many bad pictures you've seen, you'll always find one that's even more stupid.

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