New image software, Dreambit, allows you to change your hairstyle.
Washington University researchers have developed a new image software that allows people to virtually experience hundreds of different hairstyles. If you have ever been bored with having the same hairstyle month after month but were afraid that something new wouldn’t suit you, have no fear for Dreambit is here.
Its main functionality is letting people experience vast combinations of hairstyles, hair colors in different time periods, countries or anything that can be chosen as criteria in an image search engine. But beyond this capability, the system is even capable of predicting what a one-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl will look like at different ages and with various hair characteristics.
According to its website, Dreambit is a personalized image search engine developed by Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, a computer vision researcher at the University of Washington.
Dreambit draws on previous research from the University and other work in facial processing, recognition, three-dimensional reconstruction and age progression, combining those algorithms in a unique way to create the blended images.
The developers initially created an automated age progression software focusing only on a person’s face, but the current AI can add various hair characteristics and other contextual elements in an image.
Thanks to the amount of pictures of people on the internet, the number of scenarios your face can inhabit is almost endless. Because of its functionality, the software can be particularly useful in helping police to determine how missing persons, adults as well as children, will look like with different hairstyles, colors and age.
According to Ira,
“it’s hard to recognize someone by just looking at a face because we as human are so biased towards hairstyles and hair colors. With missing children, people often dye their hair or change the style so age-progressing isn’t enough.”
Another, less useful, application for this technology, is combining photographs of a certain actor with the image of a character in a movie and see how they would have looked like in that respective role.
Dreambit is currently in a beta stage but to receive free access, you will have to sign up on their website.
Will you try this image software before deciding on a new hairstyle?
Share this:
