Tokyo based startup DataGrid has engineered an artificial intelligence system that can spit out “high quality” renderings of people who don’t exist. The beings are fully constructed, face, hair, body, and all using neural networking, a form of computing partly inspired by the biological system of the same name.
But why? The company says that, “automatic generation of full-body model AI is expected to be used as a virtual model for advertising and apparel EC (E-commerce),” allowing brands to personally construct the perfect model without having to cast real people. Unrealistic beauty ideals in current advertising put pressure on people to constantly chase unattainable perfection, and now the use of mathematically flawless models that don’t actually exist could soon become the norm.
Describing the process in a press release, DataGrid claims: “It is possible to generate non-existent whole body model images with high resolution and high quality by making AI that applies deep learning called GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) to learn a large number of whole body model images”.
If you lined up everyone who’s ever modelled for Uniqlo, mushed their faces slightly with a wet paintbrush, and then asked them to pose in the least natural way possible, you’d come somewhere close to the video that DataGrid has made to showcase the new technology. Essentially, it looks like someone has given an H&M lookbook to an alien and then asked them to make an advertising campaign for it 10 minutes later.
The next step for the technology, says DataGrid, is to introduce real-life movement: “We will further improve the accuracy of the whole-body model automatic generation AI and research and develop the motion generation AI. In addition, we will conduct demonstration experiments with advertising and apparel companies to develop functions required for actual operation.”
You can watch a demonstration of the technology below and read our coverage on how AI is changing the world here.