I don't know if you noticed, but it's kind of an open secret that this year was, um...
not one of the all-time greats. And one place this was reflected was in memes. We had a lot
of sad and angry memes this year, so as the year wraps up, for my singular annual act of optimism,
I've decided to turn those frowns upside down using machine learning. Because why should even
the human active smiling be immune to algorithmic replacement? And with that let's jump in!
Let's start with Adam Driver in Marriage Story. This one sparked many a meme around
the iconic arguments scene. With a little help from Adobe's neural filters and the code from
the research paper "Bringing old photos back to life",
let's see if AI magic can turn a wall punch into a wall high five.
Let's see what Photoshop thinks about Adam's expression. Let's take some of the
anger away - oh yeah! What happens if we untick retain unique details? Wow, he's really happy!
He's gone from really intense to to quite happy. Yeah, let's start with this. I don't know why
his face is so big? Adam? Oh, yep yep there's Adam. Oh, look at him! Yeah, something like that.
Let's do a quick...
Sort of looks like a human face. And now we run... Will it even detect a human face?
It did detect a face so we are on... We're off to a good start.
Okay, it looks a little more convincing, doesn't it? Ot does look like... teeth are quite screwy.
Okay we're looking a bit better. Where's the "more normal" slider? Making him older
is definitely not a good idea, no! Now as he gets older he starts to look like Bobby Deniro,
so I don't know what's going on there! Younger he's definitely looking more like the skinny
guy from Nacho Libre. Interesting. That's gonna be something to do with what's baked into the data
set. Am i that surprised that you show a computer Adam Driver's face and it gets a bit confused?
Well after a few more iterations we successfully were able to put a smile on that face.
Though it seems somewhere along the line the AI decided this was no longer Adam Driver,
but his latino doppelganger Adan Chófer.
Next, let's try a twofer with this meme of Jessica Jones and her nemesis Kilgrave staring her down.
And he's completely dead behind the eyes. Um what? Oh my goodness
that is creepy. Not helping. Let's put David Tennant's face back on. Oh my god. It's just
so creepy. What has it done with his eyebrows? How about less happy? And
yeah... let's do one at a time. So, okay you can be creepy Doctor Who. And then, can we can we make
you happy? It's giving her a buck tooth. Very odd. Okay, now she's at least visibly smiling.
She looks pretty happy with herself. She looks not only like a completely different actress,
but also like she's shot from a different angle. The shape of her face has changed significantly.
Let's bring her nose back. She looks half plastic but she does look less freaked. What can we do
--David Tennant! I'm gonna try something. Let me see if fixing his rotated head
does anything for the algorithm? Happiness comes from within. Retain unique features?
No. Dead eyed. Can we fix light direction? Does that make it less...
no. It's creeps all the way down. I mean is it is it any better than what we had?
I mean, I guess it looks slightly less muppet-like. Let's merge this down,
blur this a bit more... Five minutes later.
Oh my goodness. Creepy Dave. Something weird's going on with the cheek there.
Can we fix this? Definitely it's looking more and more like a lifeless doll. These two!
These two, I tell you. This isn't an uncanny valley it's full on creep valley.
This one was harder than I'd hoped Jessica's half-obscured face threw off the algorithms,
but with some partial reconstruction and more revision I ended up with this still
deeply unsettling but with a veneer of good cheer.
Moving on then we have Mr. Rewind Time himself, Will Smith.
Oh my god, he's gone from "Big Willy Style" to "Doing his cousin style".
Uh, if we remove ret-- whoa! Whoa! What? Oh algory---
oh! Yeah there's some weird weird stuff... one of the strangest ones. Oh!
This is one of the worst ones I've seen so far. I mean, the nose looks better? What I might do is do
a second layer. The tilt always seems to throw off these-- that one's, yeah? Eyes are still so
odd! If we take his age down the eyes look a lot better. Let's use these eyes.
This one... it might be the most problematic but it is definitely one of the most entertaining!
Wow! Will Smith has turned into an old, half-Mexican half-Italian man. Oh, he's a little
sad! He's like... I don't know why the ears have completely changed? He kind of still looks like
him? Kinda. So going from our kind of manipulated image in Photoshop to our clarified image...
After several more iterations and some old-school Photoshop adjustment, I managed to
get this plausible smile from someone who might resemble Mr Smith if you squint hard enough.
The training data for most machine learning skews heavily caucasian,
so it's not entirely surprising that we ended up with some weird results here. This is something I
talked about in my recent video rounding up other image enhancing machine learning algorithms. So
check that out if you haven't already and if you're enjoying the channel,
consider subscribing. I'd love to reach my first thousand subscribers in 2021.
Next let's try a classic meme which had renewed relevance this year
confused: screaming featuring Filthy Frank aka Joji.
Can we put a smile on Joji's face with algorithms? So that's definitely not good.
I'm gonna have to get in there. I'm just going to use the old-school tools.
Uh... is that an improvement?
Yeah, that doesn't help. He looks like the Count from Sesame Street. So let's reduce
this mouth width. Like Post Malone, I want you to be happier. It's starting to look like a smile.
But if we turn up-- ah! Kind of selling this look. Let's just see what the algorithm makes of this.
Oh no. No. That is not good. If you don't look at the eyes... and
don't look at the glasses disappearing. Basically if you don't look at the face.
Our boy ain't looking so hot. It knows there's a face here. Something deeply,
troublingly wrong. Can it do anything about it? Oh oh oh, hang on, this is starting to look like
a human being! To be honest with you, I'm kind of shocked at how
good this face is looking, considering where we were just at before.
Decrease the age. The glasses change their shape, that's so weird. This is a plausible
face. That! That's like, barely a thing. This is within the realm of possibility.
Glasses can prove difficult for these algorithms to handle but eventually
we got a human-like result, though claiming any further resemblance than that would be a stretch.
Let's try a different spin now with a subject who ostensibly is
already smiling: Hide the pain Harold.
I'm happy on the inside. I'm not hiding any pain. Yes! Starting to get better.
It's quite subtle, but there's something more convincing about Harold's smile now. It's
not that much... it's not a significant change but it's enough to sell the emotion.
The results here are much more straightforward. Not only is Harold more in line with the training
data, demographically, but this is a more realistic use case for these tools. It's
meant to tweak facial expressions really, not completely change them.
That said, let's finish with my favourite meme of the year
woman yelling at salad cat. Starting with our Real Housewives star.
There's some strangeness going on. Okay so now we've turned her
into Jennifer Lawrence with her eyes closed. Yeah that looks acceptable.
Oh? Yeah yeah yeah, it's starting to look a bit right.
I don't know why it's doing that to her eyebrows? Oh, wow! De-age a bit, because often times the age
--oh my god! She looks happy. A bit drunk. Yeah, let's brush it back in.
Better. Again, for some reason she's become Hillary Duff.
Oh! Oh my god. It's one of the most freakish ones. Oh, oh! But for some reason the eyes have
started looking directly at us, as well. Slightly surprised. Okay she's looking more like a person.
A little longer than a few minutes later.
Smudge is great. Who doesn't love Smudge? Oh? Oh! That's not happy. I don't know
what that is. So the algorithm can recognize pets' faces but it applies
human face models, which is completely bizarre. Oh! It gets me every time. I don't know what
this demon is! Oh? Yeah, it kind of looks like surprised pikachu? Yeah, this model of Smudge
is not doing us any good. Instead we're gonna just use the old-fashioned liquify.
Okay so that is uh... That's the full meme treatment!
So I had to cheat a little bit to get a workable smiling cat, but I think ultimately,
the results are just ridiculously fun. We've gone from rage, betrayal and confusion
to Hillary Duff shouting out her favorite cat, and that's a huge upgrade.
Look if you've watched this far, I hope that you've enjoyed this weird little video.
It's not entirely my usual thing, but uh this year YouTube has been a way for me to dust off
some of my video skills. Hopefully improve a bit of my production work, and also to
stave off the crushing weight of reality. So thank you to everybody who has subscribed
and to everyone watching: I hope that 2021 brings you reasons to smile the analog way. If you want
to see more videos about how design, technology and culture interact subscribe for more. As
always, my name is Linus. Thanks for watching, and I hope I'll see you in a future video.