Dear Fellow Scholars, this is Two Minute Papers with Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér.
AI research is improving at such a rapid pace, that today, we can not only create virtual humans,
but, even exert some artistic control over how these virtual humans should look.
But today, we can do something even cooler. What can be even cooler than that? Well,
have you ever seen someone with a really cool haircut and wondered what you would like with
it? Would it be ridiculous? Or would you be able to pull it off? Well, hold on to your papers,
because you don’t have to wonder anymore. With this new AI, you can visualize that yourself!
Hmm, okay, but wait a second. Previous methods were already able to do that,
so, what is new here? Well, yes! But look at the quality of the results. In some cases, it
is quite easy to find out that these are synthetic images, while for other cases, so many of the fine
details of the face get lost in the process that the end result is not that convincing.
So, is that it? Is the hairstyle synthesis dream dead? Well, if you have been holding
on to your papers, now squeeze that paper, and have a look at this new technique. And, wow!
My goodness, just look at that. This is a huge improvement just one more paper down the line.
And note that these previous methods were not some ancient techniques,
these are from just one and two years ago. So much improvement in so little time. I love it.
Now let’s see what more it can do. Look… we can choose the hairstyle we are looking for,
and, yes! It doesn’t just give us just one image to work with, no! It gradually morphs our hair
into the desired target shape. That is fantastic, because even if we don’t like the final hairstyle,
one of these intermediate images may give us just what we are looking for. Loving it.
And it has one more fantastic property. Look. Most of the details of the face remain in the final
results. Phew! We don’t even have to morph into a different person to be able to pull this off.
Now, interestingly, look, the eye color may change,
but the rest seems to be very close to the original. Not perfect, but very close.
And, did you notice? Yes, it gets better! Way better! We can even choose the structure,
this would be the hairstyle, which can be one image,
and the appearance, this is more like the hair color. So, does that mean that? Yes!
We can even choose them separately. That is, take two hairstyles, and fuse them together.
Now, have a look at this too. This one is an exclusive example, to the best of my knowledge,
you can only see this here on Two Minute Papers. A huge thank you for the authors
for creating these just for us. And I must say that we could stop on any of these images,
and I am not sure if I would be able to tell that it is synthetic. I may have a hunch due
to how flamboyant some of these hairstyles are, but not due to quality concerns, that’s for sure.
Even if we subject these images to closer inspection,
the visual artifacts of the previous techniques around the boundaries of the hair
seem to be completely gone. And I wonder what this will be able to do just a couple
more papers down the line. What do you think? I’d love to know, let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for watching and for your generous support, and I'll see you next time!