Someone Used a Deep Learning AI To Perfectly Insert Harrison Ford Into "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (gizmodo.com) 130
Andrew Liszewski, writing for io9: Casting anyone other than Harrison Ford in the role of Han Solo just feels like sacrilege, but since Ford is now 76 years old, playing a younger version of himself would be all but impossible. Or at least impossible if you rely on the standard Hollywood de-aging tricks like makeup and CG. Artificial intelligence, it turns out, does a pretty amazing job at putting Ford back into the role of Solo. The YouTube channel "derpfakes" has been posting videos that demonstrate the impressive, and at times frightening, capabilities of image processing using artificial intelligence. Using a process called deep learning, an AI analyzes a large collection of photos of a given person, creating a comprehensive database of them in any almost any position and pose. It then uses that database to intelligently perform an automatic face replacement on a source clip, in this case replacing actor Alden Ehrenreich's face with Harrison Ford's.
Not bad, but not perfect (Score:5, Interesting)
It's far from perfect, and the bitrate on that video is abysmal. If he tried this on Blu-ray footage and kept the quality up, Harrison Ford's face would stick out like a sore... face.
Re:Not bad, but not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
It's far from perfect, and the bitrate on that video is abysmal. If he tried this on Blu-ray footage and kept the quality up, Harrison Ford's face would stick out like a sore... face.
But if this is a single user effort, imagine what the resources of a movie studio could do with the concept.
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It's far from perfect, and the bitrate on that video is abysmal. If he tried this on Blu-ray footage and kept the quality up, Harrison Ford's face would stick out like a sore... face.
But if this is a single user effort, imagine what the resources of a movie studio could do with the concept.
Uh, give us a Disneyfied, PG-13, poorly written, and poorly cast Solo movie? Wasn't that major movie studio the entire problem to begin with?
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We needed a dark, gritty R rated new Star Wars trilogy.
WE NEEDED THRAWN.
Instead we got garbage and Star Wars is a ruined brand.
Re:Not bad, but not perfect (Score:5, Informative)
I think it is more due to Star Wars fatigue. Star Wars really never was a good set of movies. However it was often people first step into the Epic Sci-Fi action flick. So a few movies every 20 years, isn't the big of a problem, because a new generation will come in and enjoy it. But with one every year, The generation is already sick of it. Because they are not getting an new experience from it.
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A good story well told is always fun. What fucked star wars, idiots who did not understand science what so ever, thinking they were geniuses at everything because that's what their marketing department told everyone, allowing really, really, dumb stories, like bad Saturday afternoon cartoon stories, being told with hundreds of millions of dollars and trying to cover over the mess with PR=B$.
The animated series Star Wars Clone troopers was better written and had better stories than the movie even Star Wars R
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They might even do it all the time, but they didn't tell you.
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We've seen what they can do: they can still only get it almost, but not quite, perfect.
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Easier to imagine than none on /.
(Such as yourself.)
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To be fair, the data of "young Ford" the algorithm had to work with is decades old.
And mostly on high quality 35mm stock.
It would be really interesting to see what it could do with data from an actor of the "Blue-ray" era, although in second though the algorithms used to compress the data would actually make things worst.
Why would that make any difference. Pretty much all of Ford's old movies are out on Blu-Ray by now. Also 1080p digital has far less detail than high quality 35mm.
Re:Not bad, but not perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
> To be fair, the data of "young Ford" the algorithm had to work with is decades old. It would be really interesting to see what it could do with data from an actor of the "Blue-ray" era,
You spelled Blu-ray wrong. Also the data of young Ford from the 1970s/80s is in Ultra High Definition (aka film), so the data is not deficient.
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You spelled Blu-ray wrong.
Oh, so you were confused about what they meant? No? (obviously not)
Then you're just being a dick for the sake of it...
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I hope you got better.
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It isn't nearly as good as that Hoff guy in Gaurdians' Inferno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It almost makes me want to paint my car and install some red LEDs with a ring counter!!!
The actors weren't the problem... (Score:2)
"perfectly" (Score:2)
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Two words, "small screen".
Honestly, I expect if you blew up that fan-made clip to watch on a 60 foot screen, you'd probably notice it far more than you did watching this video on a comparatively tiny computer monitor.
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I agree. The chin's all wrong.
Not really perfect (Score:2)
The uncanny valley comes to mind. In some scenes the face droops a bit too much for it to be unrealistic. He's done similar ones on his channel in which the problems are more clear, fitting one face on another is possible but not invisible.
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guruevi observed:
The uncanny valley comes to mind. In some scenes the face droops a bit too much for it to be unrealistic. He's done similar ones on his channel in which the problems are more clear, fitting one face on another is possible but not invisible.
And there's a least one driving scene where his face is visibly out of proportion to both his body and the face of his girlfriend (who's in the passenger's seat next to him). It looks like he's wearing a Young Harrison Ford Halloween Mask (tm) ...
Not good, needs replacement audio (Score:2)
Frankly I preferred the original actor face to the replacement.
Now what I would have liked, was to tweak the audio so he sounded more like Harrison Ford, with at least a bit deeper voice. This clip was educational in that respect as when watching the movie I was trying to think why he didn't seem much like the original.
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:1)
So we can sexually assault someone now by creating pixels on a screen? Man this world sucks more and more each day.
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Nope. He's right. These words have specific legal meanings. You can't have "assault" without physical harm. Otherwise you might as well call it "rape" and be done with it.
Now if you had said "sexual harassment" or "defamation", you might have had a point.
Re:Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Using them in sexual videos without their consent should be considered sexual assult.
I'm all for protecting people from sexual assault and harm, but really? This is what you call assault? Let me guess, if someone looks at you and you don't want them to, you consider it sexual assault. This is the problem with calling everyone Hitler, or a racist, mysognist, pedophile, etc. After a while those words have no meaning and you have to amp it up even further.
How about we call it misuse of someone's likeness, or just plain rude and obnoxious. If there are laws against this, then they should be charged. But let's not go full tilt stupid.
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, here's the problem. I have a neighbor that's on the sex offender database. I asked him about it.
Turns out, he was caught peeing an an alley next to a bar. Being a little gross, but harming nobody. The cop booked him for indecent exposure, and it snowballed from there.
All of a sudden, there's no line between a rapist and a drunk kid. Do you see the problem with labeling everything as "Sexual Assault"?
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
Your daughter gets banged like a screen door every Thursday at the truck stop.
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:4, Insightful)
With this kind of parental upbringing you are showing he'd probably voluntarily stay away. People with messed up childhoods are often too difficult to be worth the hassle.
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Ok, let's try it this way, hypothetically:
Your daughter comes home, and says "Mommy/Daddy, I've been sexually assaulted!".
Do you want to know if they were Raped, Flashed, or photoshopped into an image? Are those three things really entirely equivalent to you? you have no more questions?
I have two daughters myself. I'm not interested in yours. I also want words to have meaning, and not just use one scary phrase to describe any kind of harm that may come to a person.
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Yes, so I can know whether to use a red hot pair of pliers to remove his genitals and stuff them down his throat, smack the person upside the head, or fry their system.
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$1000 sounds like a perfectly reasonable punishment. Being labelled a sex offender for an act that was entirely not sexual is not reasonable.
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Ok, fine. We should call it "misuse if someone's likeness in a sexual manner" and force the guy register on a "misuse of someone's likeness in a sexual manner" database and to send out notifications to all if his neighbors that he misses people's likeness in a sexual manner.
Yeah, great idea. We should create a database for everyone. Anyone who speeds shouldn't be allowed to drive. We should put alcoholic and pot smokers on a list.too, or should we make a list for individual drugs? Anyone who can think should go on a list too, obviously they're a threat. You obviously need to be on the list of people who should be medicated.
While the sexual predator list sounded like a good idea in theory, in practice it's a fucking disaster. Some who gets caught taking a piss in the bushes
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This has been a REALLY WEIRD curveball that I've noticed out on the fringes. Violence doesn't have to be violent anymore. Words can be violent. You can "cause violence" against someone without ever even being in the same room as them or knowing their name. It's all utter bullshit, but for some reason they want to redefine terms until.... I dunno.... it's easier to claim victim status?
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I get the feeling that this Dallas May character is someone who screams "RAPE" at the top of her lungs when people won't let her cut them in line at the grocery store.
She'll justify it by saying that they're "raping" her time by making her stand in line, just like everyone else.
LK
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It's libel at worst. There's no way Deep Fake videos would qualify as assault or sexual assault. This is basic jurisprudence. It's much closer to stating publicly that "Stacey is a slut" versus assaulting Stacey.
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:1)
There is something wrong with you, dude
Re: Deep Fakes should be illegal (Score:2)
Wasn't meant to be.
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Using them in sexual videos without their consent should be considered sexual assult.
That would be contrary to the plain definition of assault: "make a physical attack on" and even the extended legal (in some jurisdictions) definition fo assault: "a credible threat or attempt to cause battery" (where battery refers to the actual bodily contact). I'm not arguing against the idea that using someone's likeness in photos or videos without their consent being illegal, just the idea that it be labeled as "assault." Otherwise, this would dilute the definition of assault. Perhaps someone could c
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That would be contrary to the plain definition of assault: "make a physical attack on" and even the extended legal (in some jurisdictions) definition fo assault: "a credible threat or attempt to cause battery" (where battery refers to the actual bodily contact). I'm not arguing against the idea that using someone's likeness in photos or videos without their consent being illegal, just the idea that it be labeled as "assault." Otherwise, this would dilute the definition of assault. .
Oh, and we certainly can't have that.
Someone hasn't been watching the news lately.
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This kind of deepfake could fall under libel laws, which include both written information and pictures. Libel is certainly different from a physical attack, and is clearly a type of harm.
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assault? how about defamation? (Score:3)
Wouldn't defamation of character be a better charge for this?
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Using a person's likeness in photos or videos without the person's consent should be illegal.
To a certain extent, it is. Little fan works like this might go under the radar, but Lucasfilm, even though they own all the footage of Harrison Ford from the Star Wars days, would need to get permission from Ford to insert him into a new movie, just like they needed from Peter Cushing's estate to get Cushing inserted into Rogue One.
Many of these rules date back to Back to the Future Part II, where test footage of Crispin Glover (George McFly) from the first movie was used along with actor Jeffrey Weis
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That sounds like an excellent new topic for the ever expanding area of Social Justice.
close (Score:2)
would be better with blockchain.
But the really big questions are .. (Score:5, Funny)
Can they erase Jar-Jar? Or replace Hayden Christensen with an actual wooden post?
James Bond (Score:2)
His previous work of inserting Elon Musk as Bond [youtube.com] is even better.
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Estates of Dead Moviestars will need good Lawyers (Score:2)
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Deepfakes is using only existing footage of the actors and of the movie it is inserted in.
In your scenario, there would instead be access to a 3D-scan of the original actor's face which could be fixed up and animated based on motion capture dots on the new actor's face. With those, you could produce an even better result.
While Peter Cushing is not alive, life-casts
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Impressive (Score:1)
Good start (Score:2)
Now let's go back to Episodes 4,5,6 and remove all the added Lucas crap to the original theatrical releases, and oh yeah, Han shoots first...(yeah I do know about the fan versions and have them.)
Then back to 1,2,3 and remove Jar Jar, except for killing the character in EP 1
Then you could make it look like Hayden actually cared about being in a movie, instead of waiting in a line for a new iPhone.
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There are many fan-edits to Star Wars out there, both for restoring the original Star Wars, removing the SE additions, and for making the prequels less cringey. The most famous de-specialisation project has an article on [wikipedia.org] even.
There are also a few groups that have located surviving prints of the original movies, scanned them in 4K and are performing digital restoration on them. See for instance, Team Negative1's work on [youtube.com].
For Disney/Lucasfilm to re-release the original trilogy in good quality would be difficul
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You should search on your favorite P2P tracker for the "Despecialized edition" of the original Star Wars movies.
Full HD with minimal BS.
LK
Can't Fake Stature (Score:2)
Gah (Score:2)
Pretty amazing job my ass. Looks absolutely terrible.
Yeah I know this is a fanboi job and I give *him* credit for this, but boo on Gizlozer for overhyping it.
Need the voice, too (Score:2)
Next step... (Score:1)
Next step;
Keep Ford, and replace everything else with the footage and story from A New Hope.
Deep Learning AI - the new buzzphrase (Score:2)
The article doesn't say anything about the technology, other than to describe it as "deep learning AI." What exactly does this mean? Is it a neural network? If it's not, it's not really "AI." Deep learning? Maybe, or maybe it's just brute force that runs on really powerful equipment. Can't tell from the article.
Amazing, but absolutely not (Score:2)
It looks like someone wearing a Harrison Ford mask. It shows, very clearly, just how good Harrison Ford is as an actor.
This is certainly his face, but it isn't his facial expressions. It isn't his smile. It isn't his brow furl. Those aren't the way that his eyes widen.
Simply put, it doesn't move correctly.
And that means that the mechanisms by which Harrison Ford's face is attached to his head are betrayed. Dimples might be there, but they don't restrict the skin's movement.
It's awesome, in terms of tec