
Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo - ashin
https://research.googleblog.com/2017/05/neural-network-generated-illustrations.html?m=1
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gene-h
This is fucking dumb, and I am absolutely ok with this. The fact that we are
able to do these 'dumb' and silly applications is a good sign. It shows that
the field has advanced to the point where it is cheap enough to do these
'dumb' applications.

Not only that, but this 'dumb' application has immediate value(gets more
people to use google's service and thus display ads to them). Because of the
value these dumb applications have, they could help drive AI research and
development of general purpose machine learning hardware.

Sometimes it's ok to do 'dumb' things.

~~~
jaredklewis
Advanced? Since the earliest AI research, it's hard to think of a time when
games, puzzles, and toys were not front and center. Whether writing a chess AI
would or a humorous chat bot, a focus on "silly" applications has always been
the norm.

I'm not against such applications and share your opinion that they are great.
But it's not new. The field has always been this way.

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levesque
The feature is technically interesting, but I don't care about Allo. There are
enough silly messaging apps out there, evolving in their own silos. I miss the
days of the XMPP protocol.

~~~
spiderfarmer
I have always trouble remembering where a message came in. I have SMS /
iMessage, Messenger, Whatsapp, 5 e-mail accounts and a Forum Inbox to worry
about. And since you can't exactly flag messages as 'to do' I have to answer
immediately or risk forgetting to reply.

I hate that.

~~~
mholmes680
Ditto this, on android.

I have Messages, which i think is Google's... and i only downloaded it because
the apps from Samsung, Verizon, and Facebook went to war in January (on my
phone at least) and somehow I ended up getting texts in either the samsung app
or verizon but never both, but group conversations in facebook messenger, but
only the verizon app would actually allow picture messages to be viewable if i
sent them to my mother.

I also have Allo, because a (<\-- not plural) coworker and I were curious
about it. I think it solved that they didn't have facebook but did have apple,
or maybe not i don't know. I also downloaded Duo and haven't opened it since,
and I had hangouts, but i'm so very angry that Google screwed that up yet
again. I have zero confidence in Google products fulfilling any of my needs
completely ever again, and I really used to be the Google-champion of my
friends... sigh.

~~~
spiderfarmer
Yeah, Google's been messing up messaging ever since Google Wave.

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andybak
"Starting to roll out today" \- does anyone versed in traditional PR have a
say in this new trend in slow roll-outs?

I can see how it makes sense from an engineering point of view but I just
installed Allo to try it out and it hasn't rolled out to me yet.

I'm rather unlikely to remember to try again in a few days/weeks etc.

This has happened multiple times in similar scenarios. I dug out my Gear VR to
try the new Oculus browser. I didn't get it for 4 weeks (only a particular
interest in WebVR kept me coming back to see if it was there).

Surely this is squandering good press and good will?

~~~
derefr
In most client apps that obey backend-account feature-flags, the app will
introduce (advertise) the feature to you itself when your account gets the
switch flipped.

AFAICT, they don't expect this announcement to reach or sway anyone who's
going to _use_ the feature; this post is more there to serve as genuine
news—i.e. it's written to provoke water-cooler "what Google is up to"
conversations among developers. (It's on the Google Research blog, after all;
what consumer would even see it?)

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pwaivers
This actually looks pretty cool. Some initial thoughts:

\- I have never used Allo or really even know what it is. I am downloading it
now though.

\- I hope it does more than just auto-create a Bitmoji character. I wonder how
its going to distinguish itself from other avatar creating apps.

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rch
I'd try the H.R. Giger version.

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rawnlq
Is anyone working on this for 3d avatars (like in game character
creation/customization except automatic)?

~~~
zo7
Loom.ai does just that: [https://www.loomai.com/](https://www.loomai.com/)

(disclaimer: I work here)

We're still pretty early stage, but hope to open up our developer API/SDK
soon!

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vernie
Has anybody actually tried it yet? I haven't seen any results outside of this
blog post.

~~~
luminiferous
Just did, it worked pretty well. It reminds me a lot of Nintendo's thing where
they automatically make a Mii based off a picture of your face, except better.
If you don't like the sticker pack that was outputted, you can fix your hair
or whatever and try again. Took about 10-20 seconds for the first try, only
1-2 seconds for the second try, so there's probably some caching going on. My
only complaint is that it's not super intuitive how to actually get to this
feature. You have to be in a chat, go to stickers, go to the add stickers
section, and then it'll be in that menu.

~~~
joefkelley
Strange, I don't see anything in that menu. Haven't been able to figure out
how to do it, maybe there's some sort of rolling update happening?

~~~
antirez
I think it's rolling out slowly.

~~~
vernie
Oh, so they jumped the gun with this post? Got it.

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Dimi9909
that's cool. Google always WOW people.

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0x006A
First I have to use a phone number to use an internet based chat system, now I
should be excited about some comic figure? Allo - Are you out of your mind?

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agjacobson
This is childish. Apple's version of this works better, in real time, in
FaceTime, because it's above a threshold of kiddiness.

~~~
vernie
What's Apple's version of this?

