Official Students' Blog of University of Advancing Technology

AI: Pixels faces into Photos

Written by Isis Boone | Jun 26, 2021 8:21:00 PM

Do you ever wonder how much AI can be modified and turned into something else? Something cool or innovative that could help someone or society in any way. I wondered that too as I am studying Artificial Intelligence at the University of Advancing Technology. Looking into articles on how AI can be innovated or changed for the better or maybe the worse. During my Research, I found something cool I have not seen before that had to do with the future of AI.

I found an invention of a program, called Face Depixelizer, which is an app with AI that can take ultra-low res pixelated photos of a face and turn it back into a realistic portrait photo. This app was made by a Russian developer named Denis Malimonov, the app that he created utilizes the power of another app called, StyleGAN. When using the application, the input faces do not need to be real people. You could potentially use the tool to see what video game characters may look like in real life. You could also use this type of tool to identify faces that have been purposely pixelated for privacy or safety reasons. The application does not show what the person per say looks likes, it finds any face that fits. The Face Depixelizer is available to use at Google Colab. The input photo does need to be square and you can use it by pressing the button indicated by the red arrow along with scrolling down to where you can input your file. The application helps with the identification of certain facial features instead of restoring the original face.

How do you think this application will be used? Will it be modified for it to recognize people who are pixelated and want to stay anonymous? Do you think this is a great application or not a great application and cause problems in society? Do you think this would be beneficial in the long run of this application being public?