Disney's age-altering AI can make young actors look 80 or old actors 20 in REAL ... trends now
Disney researchers are out to transform Hollywood with a new artificial intelligence tool that could eliminate the need for special effects to alter the age of actors playing a character in a movie.
Using the face re-aging network (FRAN), filmmakers can now make actors look as young as 20 or as old as 80 years old just by inputting the person's headshot into the system that then predicts parts of the face should be altered by age.
It then adds effects like wrinkles or smoothed skin as a layer on the actor's face in the film or television show without requiring a skilled artist to alter frame-by-frame manually, which typically causes facial identity loss.
Disney touts its AI tool as being the first solution of its kind that can automatically alter an actor's age on video despite expressions, lighting conditions and viewpoints.
The AI tool is fed a headshot (input) and provides results from 20 years old to 80 years old, in increments of 10 years
The system was trained on 2,000 synthetically generated images, allowing it to learn different facial expression in order to keep the altered age layer stable as the actor moves in the film
Digitally altering the age of actors' faces has become popular over the years, but current models seem to fail at convincing viewers.
A recent use of de-aging technology was seen in Netflix's 'The Irishman,' which was filed by director Martin Scorsese who spent millions of dollars on digital de-aging effects, only for results to be criticized by viewers.
The gangster film cost around $159 million, but most of the funds went to making Robert De Niro look in his 20s - he was 76 years old when the movie was shot.
Many viewers noted the results were unstable across the video frames.
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Researchers said the AI is capable of aging blurry frames within a film
The idea is not only to make the age-altering more convincing, but to eliminate the time-consuming and costly method of hair and makeup (pictured)
One Redditor shared: 'It's 100%
