Disney AI Automatically Changes the Age of the Actors

It makes actors look younger or older, if you need it.

Disney developed an artificial intelligence capable of re-aging actors for movies. It was announced via the company's website. Developers from Disney Research Studios published an illustrative video to demonstrate the algorithm’s work and an article with more details about the development of this neural network.

AI was named FRAN (face re-aging network). To create it, the researchers generated a database of thousands of random faces that were aged and de-aged with the existing machine learning aging tools. Then the photobank was used to train FRAN.

FRAN does not create a whole new face that looks like an actor, but rather reshapes his or her own features. When AI gets the first image of a person, it detects elements that need to be changed. For example, the neural network decides whether to add or remove wrinkles on the face according to the task, and then applies the effect to the actor’s skin. Developers claim that the result is efficient even if the actor does not look into the camera or looks around.

Our new face re-aging network (FRAN) incorporates simple and intuitive mechanisms that provide artists with localized control and creative freedom to direct and fine-tune the re-aging effect, a feature that is largely important in real production pipelines and often overlooked in related research work

The tool may greatly reduce costs for Disney, since visual effects constitute one of the largest expenditures of filmmaking. It will also ensure that actors do not overwork because of the exhaustive process of aging make-up.