Want to turn a Second Life avatar pic into the "photo" of their real life analog? Watch this Artbreeder tutorial from Ugleh Ulrik, the SL creatorwho first startedthe whole buzz around using the AI-driven platform to transform avatars.
"I do a lot of experimenting with new AI tech," Ulrik tells me, "and once I saw Artbreeder my first thought went to Pixar characters but then after that I realized making Second Life avatars more real was a possibility and I tried it out on a few close friends and it worked well."
Here's his key tips to keep in mind when using Artbreeder on an avatar:
My post last week on Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image, generated a mini-burst of excitement among many in the SL community, who started experimenting with the process to turn pictures of their avatars into "real" people. And the results are pretty mesmerizing! Above is one by Devin Vaughn, whose avatar looks in real life, I guess, like the clone of Ronan Farrow blended with Anderson Cooper?
The dapper AF avatar on your left belongs to TheVirtualGent on Reddit; the "photo" on your right is what he might look like in real life -- a process made possible via Artbreeder, which uses Generative Adversarial Networks to create "children" of an original image along user-selected parameters.
This particular "photo" was created by a Redditor called Ugleh, who gave me the basic how-to of how they made it:
What you're watching above is a video from social media influencer Taryn Southern, except not quite: It's a "clone" of Ms. Southern, created via an AI platform called HourOne.
"We take a small sample of video footage (ideally captured in a studio, as we did with Taryn), and use our proprietary AI algorithms and generative adversarial networks, to generate an exact digital replica of that person," explains Natalie Monbiot, Head of Business at HourOne. "We can then program the digital twin by way of text or voice inputs, to generate new content delivered in an entirely lifelike way. Uniquely, we don’t do any stitching with our characters – they are fully generated, in the cloud, to deliver with flexible and natural facial expressions -- and since the videos don’t need to be ‘handled’ the potential to scale is enormous."
Monbiot estimates it's possible to save 95% of production costs on future videos, using clones this -- since after all, once Taryn's clone is created, a real life studio, camera crew, make-up, lighting, etc. are no longer required. To be sure, there's a certain dead-eye loss of humanity in the transition from biological Taryn to digital Taryn, as you may notice from the video. But Monbiot says HourOne's AI clones will become more lifelike and expressive in future iterations:
"Today we specialize in face-to-camera video with nuanced and natural facial expression and head motion," as she puts it. "You will certainly see bigger ranges of movement and emotion in the coming months."
From the point of view of well-known online personalities like Taryn Southern, not to mention major pop stars, film celebrities, and beyond, this opens up the possibility of their AI clones continuing to perform, endorse products, make press appearances, and beyond, even while their organic selves are sleeping, or on vacation.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Tiago’s “Ma part d’ombre” was inspired by “My Dark Place” a stunning memoir by James Ellroy, an American author who invents language anew while he writes. I wonder how the magic of his language translates. I think this picture beautifully captures the multiple layers of meaning in the book’s title as well as the complexity of the book -- apparently using layers of after-effects to give the avatar added realism.
Why do so many VRChat users look like cutesy anime girls, anyway? If you assume the snarky and simplistic answer is, "Because it's full of otaku geeks with a weird waifu fetish", watch this video which suggests the actual story is much deeper and far more fascinating than that. Created by "Strasz", who's becoming something of an anthropologist of VRChat on YouTube, his insights are based in part on a survey of over 200 hardcore VRChat users, heavily skewed (at 85%) toward people who access the virtual world through a VR headset.
His thesis for why so many VRChatters play as female anime avatars, he tells me, boils roughly down to "a confluence of factors":
"How avatars change who we are" is my new article for Samsung NEXT's Component magazine, exploring some fascinating examples of how avatars (both in VR and on flatscreens) seem to influence the user, as much as the other way around. I talk with several top academics in the field who've been studying this under-appreciated phenomenon years, including one of my favorites:
Post-doc researcher Domna Bankou and her colleagues at the University of Barcelona... recently created a VR simulation where the test subjects would see themselves as Albert Einstein, standing authoritatively in a lab coat. They did this, Bankou says, with assumptions about what would then transpire.
“To be honest with you we weren’t expecting anything to happen,” she said. “But VR changes where you are, [and] it also changes who you are.”
In fact, after volunteers completed the Barcelona VR experiment and took a cognitive performance test, those with lower IQs saw their test scores substantially improve. The act of virtually embodying the smartest human in history apparently made them more intelligent in the real world — at least temporarily.
Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
Jupiter Firelyte created a stunning homage to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, recreating the famed “Notorious RBG” in Second Life. She gives great detail on all the elements that went into it and I love her for it. She includes the original screenshot in the description as well.
