Disney Made a Movie Quality AI Tool That Automatically Makes Actors Look Younger or Older (gizmodo.com) 23
hondo77 writes: Two years ago, Disney Research Studios developed AI-powered tools that could generate face swap videos with enough quality and resolution to be used for professional filmmaking (instead of as questionably low-res GIFs shared around the internet). This year, the researchers are demonstrating a new tool that leverages AI tricks to make actors look older or younger, minus the weeks of work usually needed to perfect those kinds of shots.
Using neural networks and machine learning to age or de-age a person has already been tried, and while the results are convincing enough when applied to still images, they hadn't produce photorealistic results on moving video, with temporal artifacts that appear and disappear from frame to frame, and the person's appearance occasionally becoming unrecognizable as the altered video plays. To make an age-altering AI tool that was ready for the demands of Hollywood and flexible enough to work on moving footage or shots where an actor isn't always looking directly at the camera, Disney's researchers, as detailed in a recently published paper, first created a database of thousands of randomly generated synthetic faces. Existing machine learning aging tools were then used to age and de-age these thousands of non-existent test subjects, and those results were then used to train a new neural network called FRAN (face re-aging network).
Using neural networks and machine learning to age or de-age a person has already been tried, and while the results are convincing enough when applied to still images, they hadn't produce photorealistic results on moving video, with temporal artifacts that appear and disappear from frame to frame, and the person's appearance occasionally becoming unrecognizable as the altered video plays. To make an age-altering AI tool that was ready for the demands of Hollywood and flexible enough to work on moving footage or shots where an actor isn't always looking directly at the camera, Disney's researchers, as detailed in a recently published paper, first created a database of thousands of randomly generated synthetic faces. Existing machine learning aging tools were then used to age and de-age these thousands of non-existent test subjects, and those results were then used to train a new neural network called FRAN (face re-aging network).
Getting closer to Star Wars OT (Score:2)
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and when the technology leaks out, they'll all be doing "it" with the Wookie.
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Worked perfectly for Luke in Boba Fett show (Score:5, Interesting)
The send of season 2 Mandalorian, Luke Skywalker from Return of the Jedi era appeared - while he looked pretty good there were some complaints, which I agree with - still not quite out of that uncanny valley though it was getting close.
But in the Book of Boba fest, they had extended young Luke Skywalker scenes that I thought were perfect. The face didn't just look good but it felt alive, including mannerisms that you were used to seeing. It really said to me that de-aging had arrived as a very viable technique, which is great as we can enjoy aging actors just that much longer in new work related to older stuff they had done...
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Corridor Crew did a better job than the Mandalorian but it still wasn't the same yet.
Just a matter of time tho.
Need Accuracy for That (Score:2)
For the young Skywalker scenes, they needed to make the face look exactly l
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For the young Skywalker scenes, they needed to make the face look exactly like he did in the original films
That is a good point that the process was not quite the same and was manipulating data to a bit different goal...
It also said to me, they finally know what they need to do tomato a face really look like a real face, and I figured generally that level of understanding of all the fine details (especially in terms of video alteration) were a good sign this other de-ager would, if not now, eventually look
Virtually huge (Score:2, Interesting)
It's been well over a decade they could add huge muscles to a live video feed. I'm surprised facial de-aging tooj so long.
You didn't think Vin Diesel's arms were as thick as The Rock's, did you? Or that guy who died, for that matter, standing there in the movie talking, looking like a Gorilla Grodd in a T shirt.
Quality (Score:3)
Source paper and video (Score:5, Informative)
Disney should focus on good plots and good writing (Score:1)
CGI is too often a crutch for the uncreative. It shows in the box office receipts.
https://deadline.com/2022/11/b... [deadline.com]
Look at Andor for good writing [youtube.com].
Be careful not to overdo it (Score:1)
Too young [liveaction.org] or too old [dinosaurdracula.com] probably isn't what you want.
Well, unless it is.
Oblig Lawrence Olivier quotation (Score:1)
Obviously movies involve tech, but I prefer movies with the least amount of tech possible, because no amount of hand-waving can disguise bad acting, stupid plotting, and terrible dialogue (yes Avatar, I am looking at you).
In Olivier's words (and in a slightly different context): “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
Bad Example (Score:2)
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Avatar is a very bad example because, much as I hate to point out, its huge box office success suggests that for most people lots of tech really can disguise bad acting, stupid plotting, and terrible dialogue.
No - it simply means that people don't care about bad acting, stupid plotting, and terrible dialogue.
Potential for abuse (Score:2)
I foresee lots of videos circulating on social media where politicians have been subtly altered to make them look older (to push a perception that they're too old for office) or younger (to counter that perception). Most viewers won't have any idea they're being manipulated.
Or you could just pay for decent makeup people (Score:2)
Good work, McKay (Score:2)
and those results were then used to train a new neural network called FRAN
(friendly android).
Jeff Bridges was the test case (Score:2)
No one here mentioned it, but in Tron: Legacy, Disney made Jeff Bridges look younger so he could play Clu [mtv.com]. I'm going on the presumption that was the test case for whether it could be done in a decent fashion and this current act is building on what they learned.
Disney achieves what random youtubers do (Score:2)
In case anyone hasn't seen it, https://www.businessinsider.nl... [businessinsider.nl], using AI and deepfake to play with ages of actors isn't rocket surgery, and neither is besting what studios have come up with in the past.