AI used to create shockingly realistic pictures of people who don’t exist

A photographer has created pictures of people who do not exist but with artificial intelligence (AI) program Dall-E 2.

A French photographer, Mathieu Stern, used nascent software, not yet readily available to the public, to create photorealistic portraits of fictional people that he documented in a YouTube video.

Stern, who recently created a series of wild camera designs on the program, began by instructing Dull-E to create an image of “a young pretty woman wearing a yellow kimono in a tropical greenhouse.”

“At first the lack of information about the camera, lens and general form of the image did not yield impressive results,” Stern explains on YouTube.

“So to help Dell-E, some details should be added to the general description, like lens, camera, film, and adding some words like bokeh.”

Stern says the best results came after adding the word “Graflex”. The Graflex cameras were large format cameras, very sharp in the center but with a strong bokeh.

The Paris-based photographer says the technology is still very young and requires a lot of trial and error.

“For each test, you have some great results, but you also have some pretty terrible results.”

Team-E2 has trouble with the subject’s eyes in the photo. So Stern imported the images into Photoshop and, using the new neural filter, he changed the direction of the eyes so that they looked human.

endless possibilities

Once upon a time, Stern had good control over the AI’s “camera settings”. He could then experiment by varying the age, gender and ethnicity of the model. Stern can also add face paint or add crazy props, such as an astronaut’s helmet, or elf ears.

The pictures don’t just include one person, another person could be added to the frame, or even a pet tiger, iguana, or parrot.

However, “Camera Settings” can also be changed. Stern was able to change the settings to make photos look as if they were taken on a Polaroid, weight plate collodion and even a Sigma 85mm 1.8.

“After this experiment, I think we’ve reached a moment in the history of photography that we just can’t ignore. Those results are absolutely insane. In my opinion, it’s the best form of image-making since digital photography.” One of the important developments,” he says.

“I haven’t felt excited about a new technology since I first played a video game as a kid.”

Stern’s Portraits Are Not His Copyright

Despite the time and effort spent on the project, works cannot be registered with the US Copyright Office after it has been determined that an AI artwork cannot be copyrighted.

image credit: Photos provided courtesy of Matthew Stern.

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