
Cloud images that are recognized as human faces by a face-detection algorithm - jsvine
http://ssbkyh.com/works/cloud_face/
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ewindisch
Far more interesting is their facial-captcha project:
[http://ssbkyh.com/works/fadtcha/](http://ssbkyh.com/works/fadtcha/)

They assume that a computer will detect faces where humans do not and use such
a selection as a captcha. It forces the computer to make a random guess
against its matches so there is still a chance of it getting the right answer,
but it's an interesting concept.

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camillomiller
A lot of artistic value, but not so many practical applications. To bypass
this, a bot can simply be tweaked to draw a frame shifted of x and y pixels in
any direction after correctly guessing a face. The system will see no match
with the non-detectable-by-a-human face and therefore it will think the bot is
a human.

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Huggernaut
I agree. It seems this could be used to determine only whether the testee is
not-human. It's trivial like you say, to trick the test into believing it is
human by not finding a face.

At first glance I thought the test was only to determine whether the testee is
definitely not-human but the description actually implies categorising into
computer and not-computer:

"FADTCHA(FAce Detection Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a
type of challenge-response test to determine whether the response is generated
by a computer. The test involves asking a testee to find* a face in a
presented image and draw a square region of the face. If one correctly finds a
face, it can be presumed that it is a computer, otherwise it will be regarded
as a non-computer."

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camillomiller
Indeed. Great artistic value, low practical value. Which is not a negative
take, of course.

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arb99
This one is interesting too...
[http://ssbkyh.com/works/cat_human/](http://ssbkyh.com/works/cat_human/)

" Human faces recognized as a cat face by a cat face-detection algorithm"

and

"Cat faces recognized as a human face by a human face-detection algorithm"

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bitwize
A lot of Serious Cats got recognized as humans...

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TheOtherHobbes
Aren't there entire websites devoted to this?

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NoMoreNicksLeft
This is the basis of "artificial creativity". Train these NNs to recognize
faces (or anything else, maybe especially everything else), and then run
random noise through them. See what they come up with.

You could have an algorithm coming up with some pretty decent (and original)
cartoon faces. Or with art, abstract or not.

This is what your brain does.

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mattwad
That doesn't sound right. You suggest if you give the computer something that
looks like a face, then add a filter, it has somehow created an idea on its
own. Yet you are still telling the computer what to do, it has done nothing
creative on its own. I'd venture that real "creativity" is the reverse ... the
ability to create something that is recognizable as a face.

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NoMoreNicksLeft
No. I suggest giving the thing _noise_. Give it lots of noise.

Let it find its own face. Let it find several, and let it score the ones it
thinks are the best.

Then maybe toss those at another NN that's been trained on cartoon faces. Let
it modify this noise-face so that it's more cartoonish.

And just keep iterating through it like that.

> it has somehow created an idea on its own.

Can we please grow up. Creative people aren't "creating" like some judeo-
christian deity ex nihilo.

They're exploring a finite ideaspace and keeping the best ideas they stumble
upon.

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TheOtherHobbes
There's an entire branch of computer science devoted to studying creativity
and computation. Google Prof Geraint Wiggins for some examples.

His ideas about this are a bit more thoughtful and insightful than 'exploring
a finite ideaspace.'

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NoMoreNicksLeft
If he wants to make a career out of something so simple, I'm not going to stop
him. Why anyone would listen to him, that's another thing entirely. Perhaps
you like the sound of bullshit.

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clarkmoody
I was pleasantly surprised when this wasn't a bot unleashed on the 'cloud' to
recognize human faces.

The resulting images do make an interesting exhibit of modern techno-art.

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mastermindxs
I was really excited for this then I realized I have the cloud to butt
extension on chrome.

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bitwize
I was a bit flabbergasted the first time I pointed a digital camera at an Obey
Giant sticker and a popup appeared: "The subject of this photo may have closed
their eyes."

Maybe I shouldn't have been?

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thomasjonas
Berlin based design studio OnFormative did a similar project using Google Maps
as source material:
[http://www.onformative.com/lab/googlefaces/](http://www.onformative.com/lab/googlefaces/)

Very nice to see more projects where algorithms and art come together. This
post also reminded me a bit of this project where a face detection algorithm
and a psuedo-genetic algorithm are combined to create faces out of noise:
[http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/04/genetic-algorithms-
evolving-...](http://lbrandy.com/blog/2009/04/genetic-algorithms-evolving-
human-faces/)

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tly_alex
I tested those "cloud face" in the popular face recognition engine
rekognition.com. None of them actually got recognized as face. Looks like the
face recognition algorithm they uses are pretty smart.

~~~
georgemcbay
If you upload the image of the overall piece (the one with an out-of-focus
head looking towards it) 2 of the cloud faces are recognized as faces. The
other image of the piece taken at a more skewed angle with no head blocking it
actually recognizes 3 of the panels as faces.

See:

[http://imgur.com/afUsGGj](http://imgur.com/afUsGGj)

The funny thing about seeing false faces (or patterns in general, really) is
that scale (and to some degree composition) matters, even for us humans. When
I look at the large picture of the cloud that is the first one presented in
the article at 100% scaling, I struggle to see any sort of meaningful face.
But when I locate that same image as a panel on the overall work in a smaller
scaled down presentation I see the 'face' immediately. With a browser that can
appropriately scale down to 25% or less I can see the same thing happening
with the actual large source images... once I hit about 50% scaling I can see
the "faces" that the computer recognized.

Obviously YMMV depending upon monitor size vs dpi as to where they stop being
clouds and start being faces.

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tly_alex
yeah, those clouds looks totally like drawing of faces.

Looks like the face of a statue in the museum.

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jrapdx3
We do tend to "see" patterns that associate to built-in or learned
abstractions, such as faces (or elephants, etc.) in clouds. This is especially
the case when social reinforcement is a factor, like when someone points
skyward and asks, "don't you see a face in that cloud?" and soon everyone
standing nearby agrees it sure looks like a face.

That computers are "fooled" may simply reflect their human programming, though
not being fooled could well be a very hard problem to solve.

It's amusing the way face-detection in my spiffy digital camera (an Olympus
EM1) will find faces in all kinds of inanimate objects. The feature can be
useful for photographing real people, but in other situations face-detection
is just a distraction and I keep it turned off.

Though now I may have to aim the camera at a few clouds...

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smorrow
> It's amusing the way FACE-DETECTION in my spiffy digital camera (an Olympus
> EM1) will find faces in all kinds of inanimate objects.

They set out to specifically look for faces. So that's what they'll find.

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jrapdx3
But when it finds a "face" and it's really a pile of old flower pots--not even
close to a concept of "human face"\--now _that 's_ amusing.

It shows the limits of the technology, but as in the article, technological
quirks can sometimes be exploited creatively.

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jsvine
> ‘Cloud Face’ is a collection of cloud images that are recognized as human
> face by a face-detection algorithm. It is a result of computer’s vision
> error, but they often look like faces to human eyes, too. This work attempts
> to examine the relation between computer vision and human vision.

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rdlecler1
Is it really computer error? Most of us probably saw the face of Einstein in
the one cloud photo, because in fact there was a strong resemblance. If a
artist paints a caricature or abstract image we can often identify the
original subject. That's not error. There is something else going on here.

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kruczek
It is an error in a sense that these are not in fact faces, but clouds. While
humans also can see shapes of faces in clouds, we are capable of understanding
that these are not real faces. Computer algorithm is not capable of
recognizing the difference which results in such misclassification, thus it is
failing its intended purpose.

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bane
I think this means the algorithm is working.

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rkda
So the algorithm has imagination. heh.

