Photo: Lizzie Plaugic |
"Another day, another fun internet thing that uses neural networks for facial manipulation." says Lizzie Plaugic, On The Verge since Jan 12, 2015.
This time it’s DeepWarp,
a demo created by Yaroslav Ganin, Daniil Kononenko, Diana Sungatullina,
and Victor Lempitsky, that uses deep architecture to move human
eyeballs in a still image.
First spotted by Prosthetic Knowledge,
DeepWarp is focused on realistic “gaze manipulation.” The authors of
the demo acknowledge that similar projects already exist (like the smile-manipulator FaceApp), but without such a singular, detailed focus.
The authors note that their findings in this study could
be applied to solve real-world issues of eye movement, like for “gaze
correction in video conferencing.” It could also be useful for “talking
head” scenarios, when reliance on a teleprompter shifts a person’s line
of sight away from the camera.
The demo is available to try here.
All you need to do is choose an image (horizontal seems to work best)
featuring a person facing forward. After you upload that image, you can
pick one of four eye-movement options, including roll and cross.
DeepWarp will spit out an mp4 file of the resulting googly-eyed person. I
tried this using images of Keanu Reeves and several dogs, but the demo
didn’t work with the dogs.
Source: The Verge