NONE of these smiling faces are real! Artists create more than 100,000 computer-generated portraits that look creepily lifelike

  • Generated Photos has made the AI-generated faces completely free for use 
  • They were made by a team of 20 experts who trained the AI system  
  • Many of the portraits look eerily lifelike and could be mistaken for real people 
  • Others have minor glitches, such as eye sockets on foreheads and weird ears

By JOE PINKSTONE FOR MAILONLINE

Published: | Updated:

A database of more than 100,000 images of people has been created - but none of them are real. 

A team of artists, AI experts and engineers teamed up on the project to create the ultra-realistic images.

It includes different sexes, races and ages and none of the people are real, but could easily be mistaken for a legitimate portrait. 

The eerie headshots appear perfect in many cases, but there are often minor glitches, including eye sockets on foreheads, funky teeth and weird ears.

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A team of artists, AI experts and engineers teamed up on the project to create the ultra-realistic images. Pictured, one of the computer-generated images

A team of artists, AI experts and engineers teamed up on the project to create the ultra-realistic images. Pictured, one of the computer-generated images 

The system made a database which includes different sexes, races and ages and none of the people are real, but could easily be mistaken for a genuine portrait

The system made a database which includes different sexes, races and ages and none of the people are real, but could easily be mistaken for a genuine portrait

A remote team of 20 AI pros and photographers took 30,000 pictures of 69 models in a controlled environment to ensure consistent output quality.

The pictures were uploaded into an original machine-learning dataset with StyleGAN software which then constructed a realistic set of 100,000 'original' headshots.

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A remote team of 20 AI pros and photographers took 30,000 pictures of 69 models in a controlled environment to ensure consistent output quality
The eerie images appear perfect in many cases, but there are often minor glitches, including eye sockets on foreheads, funky teeth and weird ears

The eerie images appear perfect in many cases, but there are often minor glitches, including eye sockets on foreheads, funky teeth and weird ears 

Generated Photos has made the AI-generated faces completely free for use, provided the website is attributed. The company was founded by Argentine Ivan Braun, based in New York, USA
A spokesperson for the US-incorporated company said Generated Photos was creating more 'variability'. It is thought they expect to solve a lack of diversity in stock imagery

Generated Photos has made the AI-generated faces completely free for use, provided the website is attributed. The company was founded by Argentine Ivan Braun, based in New York, USA 

Generated Photos has made the AI-generated faces completely free for use, provided the website is attributed.  

The company was founded by Argentine Ivan Braun, based in New York, USA.

A spokesperson for the US-incorporated company said Generated Photos was creating more 'variability'.

It is thought they expect to solve a lack of diversity in stock imagery.

A spokesperson said: 'Our goal is to help designers and other creatives to find quality images that are diverse, free and legal.

'We are also aiming to rethink the whole creative photography process.

'Generated Photos creates more variability - more faces, more emotions, more poses, more backdrops, more compositions.

'We use machine learning to either modify people's faces or generate new ones.'

Massive strides in AI have taken place in recent years, such as the rise of the wildly-popular Chinese face-swapping app, Zao.

Users can upload a photo of their face to the app, which swaps faces with celebrities on film and TV, and in music videos, in a 30-second mashup.

The 100K Project may cause concern, though, that AI-made faces could be used for malicious reasons, such as identity theft.

A spokesperson said: 'Our goal is to help designers and other creatives to find quality images that are diverse, free and legal. 'We are also aiming to rethink the whole creative photography process
Massive strides in AI have taken place in recent years, such as the rise of the wildly-popular Chinese face-swapping app, Zao

A spokesperson said: 'Our goal is to help designers and other creatives to find quality images that are diverse, free and legal. 'We are also aiming to rethink the whole creative photography process'

AI is a useful tool but the use of such technology and deepfakes has concerned many with privacy issues

AI is a useful tool but the use of such technology and deepfakes has concerned many with privacy issues 

A database of more than 100,000 images has been created - but none of the people are real
AI experts and engineers teamed up on the project to create the ultra-realistic images

A database of more than 100,000 images has been created - but none of the people are real. A team of artists, AI experts and engineers teamed up to create the ultra-realistic images

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO WORRIED ABOUT AI?

It is an issue troubling some of the greatest minds in the world at the moment, from Bill Gates to Elon Musk.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk described AI as our 'biggest existential threat' and likened its development as 'summoning the demon'.

He believes super intelligent machines could use humans as pets.

Professor Stephen Hawking said it is a 'near certainty' that a major technological disaster will threaten humanity in the next 1,000 to 10,000 years.

They could steal jobs 

More than 60 percent of people fear that robots will lead to there being fewer jobs in the next ten years, according to a 2016 YouGov survey.

And 27 percent predict that it will decrease the number of jobs 'a lot' with previous research suggesting admin and service sector workers will be the hardest hit.

As well as posing a threat to our jobs, other experts believe AI could 'go rogue' and become too complex for scientists to understand.

A quarter of the respondents predicted robots will become part of everyday life in just 11 to 20 years, with 18 percent predicting this will happen within the next decade. 

They could 'go rogue' 

Computer scientist Professor Michael Wooldridge said AI machines could become so intricate that engineers don't fully understand how they work.

If experts don't understand how AI algorithms function, they won't be able to predict when they fail.

This means driverless cars or intelligent robots could make unpredictable 'out of character' decisions during critical moments, which could put people in danger.

For instance, the AI behind a driverless car could choose to swerve into pedestrians or crash into barriers instead of deciding to drive sensibly.

They could wipe out humanity 

Some people believe AI will wipe out humans completely.

'Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this,' DeepMind's Shane Legg said in a recent interview.

He singled out artificial intelligence, or AI, as the 'number one risk for this century'.

Musk warned that AI poses more of a threat to humanity than North Korea.

'If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea,' the 46-year-old wrote on Twitter.

'Nobody likes being regulated, but everything (cars, planes, food, drugs, etc) that's a danger to the public is regulated. AI should be too.'

Musk has consistently advocated for governments and private institutions to apply regulations on AI technology.

He has argued that controls are necessary in order protect machines from advancing out of human control

AI

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