
Free AI-generated headshots put stock photo companies on notice - alanwong
https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/20/20875362/100000-fake-ai-photos-stock-photography-royalty-free
======
jvanderbot
I used to fancy myself a starving artist (emphasis on "starving").

These pictures suffer from a common newbie-artist problem!

One of the concepts of early stage drawing I noticed is "symbol drawing". This
is where a person knows how an eye should look, and where an eye should go on
the face, and so draws an eye on a face-shaped oval. They repeat this for the
other eye, a nose, a mouth, etc. They are often sad with the results.

A person who practices incorrectly will try to do photorealistic eyes, noses,
mouths, etc but use the same 2D composition technique. No matter how
realistically they can render components, their composition is off because
they are ignoring the _structure_ of a face that causes subtle differences in
the shape of each of the components _when projected onto a sheet of paper_.

Our mind is so capable of 3D modelling that when we look at a face we don't
notice the changes in perspective leading to changes in component shape and
shading. The great artist skill is to build up those 3D to 2D projections and
avoid the 2D composition (except in stylistic choices).

I suspect that the networks rendering these faces, and the underlying
biological phenomena they are designed against, are "symbol" recognizers,
rather than "structural" recognizers.

~~~
jvanderbot
Furthermore, I'd go so far as to say that the _reason_ these faces "feel"
weird sometimes is that your mind is reconstructing the _structure_ of the
fictitious persons' bodies and warning you that they have bones that are
misshapen and lumps under their eyes, and teeth that point strangely, etc.

A biological response might be "misshapen eye ... likely parasite detected,
avoid this person" or "mismatched emotional cues ... likely brain damage /
person unpredictable, avoid"

~~~
falsedan
There no parasite that causes facial deformities, and mismatched emotional
cues are a fundamental part of humour/acting. It makes as much sense to
rationalise the unbidden disgust at unexpected facial structure with disease
justifications as it does for the far more likely “person appears to have been
damaged during youth/juvenile period by violent/poor nutrition & is of a low
social class”.

~~~
lonelappde
Thanks for leading a vanguard of anti-racism against deepfakes.

Moving your left eye, nose, mouth, and right ear independently of each other
is fundamental to acting?

"Unexpected" is a milder term than "never before seen on a human seen, nor
interpolated".

~~~
falsedan
> _Thanks for leading a vanguard of anti-racism against deepfakes._

Buddy, I appreciate it. You know how hard it is when you’re surrounded by
doofuses who can’t even read well enough to tell the difference between race
and class and who don’t even understand how to read in good faith much less do
it, and stomp all over themselves trying to epic own people with ‘facts’ that
are just straw men created from their flawed understanding of existence
outside of their bubble? It’s tough, not gonna lie.

------
sagebird
This is about headshots, a very specific category of stock photos. I have a
question about stock photos more generally:

If an ai company looked at thousands of examples of commercial, copyrighted
stock photos, then created an ai that would make similar stock photos, but
have a method that prunes or selects generated photos that are sufficiently
distant from any example as no not be obviously derivative, could they conceal
their “theft” and sell their stock photos free of legal risk?

More generally, can AI wash itself clean of copyright infringement by showing
that it was “inspired” but not derivative? I guess a judge could compel you to
reveal your training set, but at some point do you think there will be general
ai that can have the argument that it only seeks “inspiration” and does not
“knock off”?

~~~
chrisa
You've hit on a very confusing and debated topic :)

I tried to do some research into this awhile ago. What I found is that you
(generally, kind of) are able to use copyrighted work to make another work as
a "transformative work". For example: you can look at an image of a person and
use that as _inspiration_ to draw the same person (as long as you aren't
tracing). However! that's still kind of a gray area.

ALSO: how does that apply if you are using the exact pixels of 1,000,000
images to make new ones? I don't think anyone has a definitive answer yet.

My guess is that it will have to be decided in some high profile court case
before we get real answers :)

~~~
sagebird
Yeah, I think that while this seems like a small question right now, it will
be incredibly impactful how it is decided for the future.

Imagine if Micheal Jackson made one album, but a week later AI’s made
thousands of albums that sounded just as good and original (or better!) but
were categorized as inspirations. Imagine how that would change the incentives
of creation to know it will be consumed by the hive mind in mere moments.

~~~
prepend
Imagine the great benefit to humanity by having all those Michael Jackson
quality albums.

I don’t think it would change incentives much. Michael Jackson is a brand.
Having procedurally generates Michael Jacksonish type music might be nice for
elevator companies, but won’t impact his ticket sales that much. There are
always lots of similar bands trying to emulate the most popular. Sometimes
they success (Creed v. Pearl Jam) but many times the only way I would learn
about them is by finding them in the dollar bin. I’m not sure what the present
day equivalent is of the dollar CD box.

------
mirekrusin
My fav so far
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GaWX-n82P9LU2QMEwxmq2XEJWjR...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GaWX-n82P9LU2QMEwxmq2XEJWjRt5EL3/view)

~~~
52-6F-62
Beautiful.

[https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WPsVkdt4qDxjV2itBgw_...](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WPsVkdt4qDxjV2itBgw_DXkTdU-
esEwY)

------
roddux
Looks like someone has rebranded 'thispersondoesnotexist.com', thrown together
an advert and turned it into a startup.

~~~
buboard
Why not?

This is useful, makes promotional/demo material more fun

------
davio
[http://www.whichfaceisreal.com/learn.html](http://www.whichfaceisreal.com/learn.html)

Little tutorial previously posted on HN teaching you how to spot the fakes.
The tell is usually around the hairline for me.

------
ThePadawan
There was a post about some "Could you determine if this person is AI-
generated or a stock image?" and turns out, that yes, it's very possible.

Most noticeably in 3/4 of the images in the article, the subject's gaze does
not work out. Their eye lines never converge.

------
mirekrusin
It deserves some titles: * "Let me calm my hair"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_M3CXoqlxCyo2Pdg8FTCkdCPlcZ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_M3CXoqlxCyo2Pdg8FTCkdCPlcZyucO6/view)
* "Do you like my beard?"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1olx8X3FlXpPdoCT5EmsjCWqWc2b...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1olx8X3FlXpPdoCT5EmsjCWqWc2b5xELm/view)
* "What are you thinking about?"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i5KnWXm0ewpqZ6toEeYlCW0JLRT...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i5KnWXm0ewpqZ6toEeYlCW0JLRTdleJ6/view)
* "Sticky fingers"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QtTv37P40a2e9w7Qa37XweT-v26...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QtTv37P40a2e9w7Qa37XweT-v269kKB3/view)
* "Ear and shoulder"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MlJP4q_BLcyhYjuJudztDzUY0pv...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MlJP4q_BLcyhYjuJudztDzUY0pvX-
oYf/view) * "My new glasses"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2QCS_cjeMCfiEFqs2fYGgNKm0T...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n2QCS_cjeMCfiEFqs2fYGgNKm0TyMJy6/view)
* "f* off asshole"
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GaWX-n82P9LU2QMEwxmq2XEJWjR...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GaWX-n82P9LU2QMEwxmq2XEJWjRt5EL3/view)
...and other treasures.

------
MichaelApproved
It would be interesting to mix in real photos then have another AI try to pick
out fakes from real ones. They can learn from each other.

~~~
stestagg
Apologies if you know this already, but ...

That's likely exactly how these pictures were generated.

Generative adversarial neural networks (the typical approach for this type of
problem) have two nets that compete against each other.

One net tries to generate images that look like the sample data, the other one
tries to tell them apart.

------
MichaelApproved
I wonder how long it'll be before we see AI photos being used in fake social
media accounts.

The use of these specific ones would be easily detected, since the dataset is
available to everyone and companies can cross-reference. However, if the
program becomes commercially available, unique fakes can easily be created.

~~~
MiroF
Read an article about it, that's already happening

------
blacksqr
Creepy fun:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eRrINyuPZ3B0_m8VTdmfkETGQdD...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eRrINyuPZ3B0_m8VTdmfkETGQdDt0VLH/view)

~~~
zackkatz
[https://doc-00-7o-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/a...](https://doc-00-7o-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/a28mupvffueiakoeo9l7qmec6bcplddf/62f3cih9chglp2jtum6ujrrbl1laohqb/1568988000000/05505109503746716616/15400632679111012794/1JKoYoqMIbsaj0jZNvpUzFQCHrWPKf35s?e=download&nonce=2ek4uk7d0rb8s&user=15400632679111012794&hash=r5283aecct50f3ponfar0nlfp7bui13g)

~~~
thisBrian
Fixed your link[0]

PS: Linking from your already downloaded url will generally be tied to your
account session.

0:
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JKoYoqMIbsaj0jZNvpUzFQCHrWP...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JKoYoqMIbsaj0jZNvpUzFQCHrWPKf35s/view)

------
freebie-poo-poo
Just goes to show that it's extremely trivial to clean up the final product
with a few passes for quality assurance.

Single handedly, even. This is something one person could do on their own.

And yet they didn't even bother to try.

If they really intend to sell such images, it's extremely unprofessional to
leave the botched examples in the mix, despite efforts to rationalize why they
should be included.

Based on that, I suspect it's one person acting alone, and it's a get rich
quick effort to take the money and run.

------
egfx
Is there any work out that is able to generate human bodies alongside the
faces? The only thing I’ve seen close to this is the X-ray app.
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760896/deepfake-nude-
ai...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18760896/deepfake-nude-ai-app-women-
deepnude-non-consensual-pornography)

------
dwyerm
There's also "This Person Does Not Exist[1]", which has been discussed a few
time before[2], here.

[1] [https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19144280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19144280)

------
sabujp
There's an artifact that looks like a scar on lots of these, e.g. :
[https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WPsVkdt4qDxjV2itBgw_...](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WPsVkdt4qDxjV2itBgw_DXkTdU-
esEwY)

------
im3w1l
Are these photos derivative works?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
In the article:

> Zhabinskiy is keen to emphasize that the AI used to generate these images
> was trained using data shot in-house, rather than using stock media or
> scraping photographs from the internet. “Such an approach requires thousands
> of hours of labor, but in the end, it will certainly be worth it!” exclaims
> an Icons8 blog post.

------
hoomank2
FYI - They are not free for commercial use per the "Terms and Condition" link
even thought it says on the homepage "for any use." It is for personal use
only.

------
larodi
there's something really frightening the way they look. like Frankenstein
images patched together from dozens of others.

~~~
yummybear
Some are spot on - but most have a tiny bit of uncanny valley going on.
Unmatched eye direction, wide faces or artifacts.

~~~
chasd00
my thought too, but i'm still pretty impressed. Usually, the "uncanny valley"
problem sticks out like a sore thumb but these, on average, are very good.

