Researchers from well-known organizations and businesses, including Google, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, have written a study describing a new photo editing tool that ingeniously uses AI. With DragGAN, a user can alter an image by dragging any two key elements, such as a person’s facial expression or a lion’s roar, to give the impression that the animal is roaring angrily.
Have you ever wished you could adjust your dog’s hyperactive pose so you could get a good shot of him or make cranky old Uncle Dave smile in a picture you took of him on Christmas morning? Then DragGAN might be the editing program you need. It is comparable to Adobe’s Photoshop Warp tool but goes a step further in terms of image modification. The new AI tool may regenerate portions of the image that did not previously exist, as opposed to just stretching pixels in amusing and imaginative ways. Examples of AI-driven software are currently only accessible online as demos, but they have a lot of potential.
The new methodology, according to researchers, examines a novel method of managing generative adversarial networks (GANs), which may now be controlled by current software using manually annotated training data or previous 3D models. It accomplishes this using two key parts. The first one directs the handle point to move in the direction of the target location using feature-based motion supervision. The second uses a fresh tracking strategy that makes use of the discriminative GAN AI features to keep localizing the handle points’ positions.
According to the research report, “Anyone can deform an image with precise control over where pixels go, thus manipulating the pose, shape, expression, and layout of diverse categories such as animals, cars, humans, landscapes, etc.”
The idea has a lot of potential even though the team is still developing it. To put it mildly, the idea that one could “make a picture of a lion stalking through the savannah” is intriguing. The researchers noted that their “approach can hallucinate occluded content, like the teeth inside a lion’s mouth, and can deform following the object’s rigidity, like the bending of a horse leg.”
