Using AI and Photoshop to Fake 'Photos' of Ancient Roman Emperors (theverge.com) 25
Machine learning "can even bring ancient statues to life, transforming the chipped stone busts of long-dead Roman emperors into photorealistic faces you could imagine walking past on the street," reports the Verge, citing a new project by a film-industry VR specialist.
Slashdot reader shirappu summarizes their report: Daniel Voshart's work on creating life-life images of Roman emperors from their statues started as a quarantine project and quickly got out of hand. His portraits of the emperors (a collection of 54 as of July) are created using generative adversarial networks, which are fed images of the emperors from statues, coins, and paintings. These are then edited and tweaked based on historical descriptions, and reworked in PhotoShop, where Voshart says he can "avoid falling down the path into uncanny valley."
Voshart has written about the process himself here.
The Verge writes: To help, he says he sometimes fed high-res images of celebrities into the GAN to heighten the realism. There's a touch of Daniel Craig in his Augustus, for example, while to create the portrait of Maximinus Thrax he fed in images of the wrestler André the Giant... The process, as he describes it, is almost alchemical, relying on a careful mix of inputs to create the finished product...
What's more, his work is already enticing academics, who have praised the portraits for giving the emperors new depth and realism. .. As a sort of thank you to his advisers, Voshart has even used a picture of one USC assistant professor who looks quite a bit like the emperor Numerian to create the ancient ruler's portrait.
Slashdot reader shirappu summarizes their report: Daniel Voshart's work on creating life-life images of Roman emperors from their statues started as a quarantine project and quickly got out of hand. His portraits of the emperors (a collection of 54 as of July) are created using generative adversarial networks, which are fed images of the emperors from statues, coins, and paintings. These are then edited and tweaked based on historical descriptions, and reworked in PhotoShop, where Voshart says he can "avoid falling down the path into uncanny valley."
Voshart has written about the process himself here.
The Verge writes: To help, he says he sometimes fed high-res images of celebrities into the GAN to heighten the realism. There's a touch of Daniel Craig in his Augustus, for example, while to create the portrait of Maximinus Thrax he fed in images of the wrestler André the Giant... The process, as he describes it, is almost alchemical, relying on a careful mix of inputs to create the finished product...
What's more, his work is already enticing academics, who have praised the portraits for giving the emperors new depth and realism. .. As a sort of thank you to his advisers, Voshart has even used a picture of one USC assistant professor who looks quite a bit like the emperor Numerian to create the ancient ruler's portrait.
Before Photoshop... (Score:4, Interesting)
Before Photoshop existed people just made busts or portraits that corrected all their perceived flaws. Therefore anything based on these unreliable records probably only somewhat resembles the real person.
Re: (Score:3)
That was definitely true of the Classical Greek style, but the Romans preferred realism, "warts and all".
Re: Before Photoshop... (Score:2)
Except in their stories.
Which always portray foreign lands and peoples more like something we nowadays would call fantasy.
Which leads me to believe they weren't honest with their busts either.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of those stories were written fifth-hand or tenth-hand, after a long process of "Chinese whispers" or whatever the politically correct term for it is. That didn't stop with the Roman empire - have you read "factual" European descriptions of China written in the 15th century, or even some of the descriptions of stuff behind the Iron Curtain from the 20th century?
Re: (Score:2)
Is there one of Biggus Dickus? (Score:4, Funny)
Or at least from Incontinentia Buttocks.
Re: Is there one of Biggus Dickus? (Score:2)
Tell us how you totally don't find Monty Python funny becaue you are such a superior snobbery fashion leader ... --.--
Re: (Score:2)
How are you talking about a serious Roman citizen?
Re: Can we retire the word "fake"? (Score:2)
Umm, how more textbook fake can something be, than this? ;)
What do you suggest we call American tits and politics and such?
Re: Emperors Geta and Florianus were Indian? (Score:1)
You know the Roman empire included Africans and such too?
Re: (Score:2)
"You know the Roman empire included Africans and such too?"
Yes, but, at least during the Principate, African natives didn't get to be Emperor. The Empire was quite classist, and rising to a position of power mostly required that you had the right ancestors. It wasn't until some time after the establishment of the Empire that provincials from outside Italy could become members of the Senate.
I'll use one on a fake ID (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some question of historical accuracy (Score:3, Interesting)
I question the accuracy of the hair color of some of these otherwise remarkable Photoshop products. For example, I believe both Caligula and Marcus Aurelius were blonds.
In other words: It's bullshit. Made-up bullshit. (Score:3)
They look like whatever he wanted them to look like. Not how they actually looked. Since that information does not exist to that degree.
So this is fake information. It feels useful, but isn't.
augustus (Score:1)
color me...unimpressed (Score:2)
I've seen them and they're interesting sure, but not worth the breathless coverage here and elsewhere. They're "look at that clever squirrel video " interesting.
I'm guessing it's "hey, I made up what some emperors looked like!" = zzz zzz
So instead it's "hey, I USED AI to make up what some emperors looked like!" = excitement
I'm pretty sure that Roman era sculptors knew their jobs, and the era was largely about realism (at least, as much as we are today anyway). There's no need for "competitive ai' s" to ra
They don't look Mediterranean (Score:1)