8 ms·

Half a dozen articles on ML-based image manipulation on HN at once. Seems we're really entering into a golden age of AI-based real-world applications, at least

Half a dozen articles on ML-based image manipulation on HN at once. Seems we're really entering into a golden age of AI-based real-world applications, at least in specific niches. Personally I'm really excited about the potential of this in design, art, movies, games and interactive storytelling. Hard to imagine what will be possible in 5-10 years from now, but I kind of expect RPG games with fully AI-generated aesthetics / graphics and stories, where only some core gameplay mechanics are still determined by the designers of the game. Really can't wait to see that. The work described in the linked article is also extremely impressive and feels almost unreal, in any case.

april_22 4y ago
Also can't wait to see where all of this will be in a couple of years!
- dspillett 4y ago
  Most likely somewhere around the bottom of the trough of disappointment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle
zokier 4y ago
> AI-based real-world applications I don't know; I feel the real-world applications are still missing and what we are now seeing are tech demos (impressive ones!) and gimmicks. I'm still waiting to see all this ML stuff to be used in a productive context.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Pixelmator Pro has a ML powered image resizer built in. I like that. Also Retrobatch has a ML based image classifier, but I didn't try that yet. Other than these, yet all these are impressive tech demos. We need them in production and preferably open source (model + training + process) versions.
- jsf01 4y ago
  I personally use ML stuff in a productive context almost every day. Topaz labs software for denoising and upscaling images, Star Xterminator and Starnet for astrophotography edits. Don’t know if this counts as productive but the tools I use to analyze my chess games are also all utilizing neural nets. So if you’re not seeing useful ML applications in your day to day life it could just be that the things they’re good at don’t align well with your job or hobbies just yet.
melling 4y ago
I’ve been waiting for an AI that can fix the color on all the old color television footage from the 1960s, 1970s, etc. News and sports, in particular.
- noneeeed 4y ago
  I'm very interested in this. It got some weird pushback, but Peter Jackson's film "They Shall Not Grow Old" really helped make it's subjects so much more real by cutting through the limitations of the old footage from the 1st World War. Being able to apply similar techniques more cheaply and quickly will bring a lot of old footage to life and make the past much more real for the viewer.
- mlboss 4y ago
  That has been possible for few years now using GANs https://towardsdatascience.com/colorize-black-and-white-photos-by-ai-cc607e164160 https://towardsdatascience.com/colorize-black-and-white-phot...
- bravura 4y ago
  Top matches for "AI color grading" https://colourlab.ai/ https://colourlab.ai/ https://www.color.io/match https://www.color.io/match https://fylm.ai/ https://fylm.ai/
seydor 4y ago
Maybe.. exciting times are back
croes 4y ago
Or it's just a hype
dagmx 4y ago
I don’t think the pervasiveness of ML articles on HN are an indicator of anything except hype trends on certain subject matters. ML research in these spaces has been very high output for many years now. As someone in the field of computer graphics , where there’s been considerable ML research over the past few years that are more reliably applicable to people’s lives , most of the exciting stuff doesn’t make it to the front page of HN even if it’s posted here. There’s been lots of research in the past few years. The initial shiny stuff makes it on here, but it’s the follow up iterations that are highly catalyzing of change that don’t because public interest in those topics has waned in the interim.
- the_duke 4y ago
  Would be great if you could share your 3-5 most exciting developments that weren't discussed mich here.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    My mind might have quite a bit of recency bias since I just wrapped siggraph a few weeks ago (without catching Covid!) so I’m a little scattershot. I might come back to this later to post more concrete lists but here’s what came to mind first. I should add that my point is more that there’s not been a slow down in ML research, and the ebb and flow of interest on HN isn’t indicative of accelerated progress in the field. Simply of what things have captured the public mind. Anyway on to the links… Disney had a slew of papers out this year, the facial motion retargeting ones in particular are very interesting for use in production of films and “metaverse” characters https://studios.disneyresearch.com/machine-learning/ https://studios.disneyresearch.com/machine-learning/ Luma have had a lot of progress in their Nerf capture and on device representation which will likely have huge effects for e-commerce use cases among other things https://captures.lumalabs.ai/unbounded https://captures.lumalabs.ai/unbounded Nvidia released an ML based version of OpenVDB that will potentially improve effects in films, but could be huge for games https://youtu.be/uAs8X5es1DE https://youtu.be/uAs8X5es1DE There were also a ton of neural rendering papers at siggraph that I still need to separate in my head mentally since I saw them presented back to back, so I apologize for just sharing a dump https://twitter.com/neural_fields/status/1555947856271446018?s=21&t=me8E3zuIOR3mLcLLUvFLCw https://twitter.com/neural_fields/status/1555947856271446018... Apple released some neural rendering content too that has a lot of implications for spatial product training https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13751 https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13751
ciconia 4y ago
> Seems we're really entering into a golden age of AI-based real-world applications... I wouldn't call moving pixels on a screen "real-world". Are these technologies going one day to have a physical effect on our lives, like, in the real real-world? I very much doubt it.
- tough 4y ago
  > very much doubt it It's week two, give it two decades. Or come and build some! Amazon in 2000 didnt knew it would become infra for the world with AWS
acomjean 4y ago
>but I kind of expect RPG games with fully AI-generated aesthetics / graphics and stories, I think Dwarf Fortress has the story generation part. The aesthetics/graphics part not yet.. And I think its procedurally generated, but with complex and strange results. https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2ztnkw/i_think_legends_is_my_favorite_mode/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2ztnkw/i_thi...
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  > I think Dwarf Fortress has the story generation part. The aesthetics/graphics part not yet.. I suspect Ultima Ratio Regum is a step up from DF even in terms of procgen world lore. I mean the creator (author?) of that game wrote their PhD thesis on the subject https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/ https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/
lukaszkups 4y ago
And imagine that its graphic is being generated on EVERY NEW GAME START so there won't be ever same experiences :O
amelius 4y ago
Speaking of which, is there any good ML-based superresolution algorithm out there? I'm trying to print a poster but some of my figures are in low resoltion ...

april_22 4y ago

Also can't wait to see where all of this will be in a couple of years!

dspillett 4y ago
Most likely somewhere around the bottom of the trough of disappointment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

zokier 4y ago

> AI-based real-world applications I don't know; I feel the real-world applications are still missing and what we are now seeing are tech demos (impressive ones!) and gimmicks. I'm still waiting to see all this ML stuff to be used in a productive context.

bayindirh 4y ago
Pixelmator Pro has a ML powered image resizer built in. I like that. Also Retrobatch has a ML based image classifier, but I didn't try that yet. Other than these, yet all these are impressive tech demos. We need them in production and preferably open source (model + training + process) versions.
jsf01 4y ago
I personally use ML stuff in a productive context almost every day. Topaz labs software for denoising and upscaling images, Star Xterminator and Starnet for astrophotography edits. Don’t know if this counts as productive but the tools I use to analyze my chess games are also all utilizing neural nets. So if you’re not seeing useful ML applications in your day to day life it could just be that the things they’re good at don’t align well with your job or hobbies just yet.

melling 4y ago

I’ve been waiting for an AI that can fix the color on all the old color television footage from the 1960s, 1970s, etc. News and sports, in particular.

noneeeed 4y ago
I'm very interested in this. It got some weird pushback, but Peter Jackson's film "They Shall Not Grow Old" really helped make it's subjects so much more real by cutting through the limitations of the old footage from the 1st World War. Being able to apply similar techniques more cheaply and quickly will bring a lot of old footage to life and make the past much more real for the viewer.
mlboss 4y ago
That has been possible for few years now using GANs https://towardsdatascience.com/colorize-black-and-white-photos-by-ai-cc607e164160 https://towardsdatascience.com/colorize-black-and-white-phot...
bravura 4y ago
Top matches for "AI color grading" https://colourlab.ai/ https://colourlab.ai/ https://www.color.io/match https://www.color.io/match https://fylm.ai/ https://fylm.ai/

seydor 4y ago

Maybe.. exciting times are back

croes 4y ago

Or it's just a hype

dagmx 4y ago

I don’t think the pervasiveness of ML articles on HN are an indicator of anything except hype trends on certain subject matters. ML research in these spaces has been very high output for many years now. As someone in the field of computer graphics , where there’s been considerable ML research over the past few years that are more reliably applicable to people’s lives , most of the exciting stuff doesn’t make it to the front page of HN even if it’s posted here. There’s been lots of research in the past few years. The initial shiny stuff makes it on here, but it’s the follow up iterations that are highly catalyzing of change that don’t because public interest in those topics has waned in the interim.

the_duke 4y ago
Would be great if you could share your 3-5 most exciting developments that weren't discussed mich here.
- dagmx 4y ago
  My mind might have quite a bit of recency bias since I just wrapped siggraph a few weeks ago (without catching Covid!) so I’m a little scattershot. I might come back to this later to post more concrete lists but here’s what came to mind first. I should add that my point is more that there’s not been a slow down in ML research, and the ebb and flow of interest on HN isn’t indicative of accelerated progress in the field. Simply of what things have captured the public mind. Anyway on to the links… Disney had a slew of papers out this year, the facial motion retargeting ones in particular are very interesting for use in production of films and “metaverse” characters https://studios.disneyresearch.com/machine-learning/ https://studios.disneyresearch.com/machine-learning/ Luma have had a lot of progress in their Nerf capture and on device representation which will likely have huge effects for e-commerce use cases among other things https://captures.lumalabs.ai/unbounded https://captures.lumalabs.ai/unbounded Nvidia released an ML based version of OpenVDB that will potentially improve effects in films, but could be huge for games https://youtu.be/uAs8X5es1DE https://youtu.be/uAs8X5es1DE There were also a ton of neural rendering papers at siggraph that I still need to separate in my head mentally since I saw them presented back to back, so I apologize for just sharing a dump https://twitter.com/neural_fields/status/1555947856271446018?s=21&t=me8E3zuIOR3mLcLLUvFLCw https://twitter.com/neural_fields/status/1555947856271446018... Apple released some neural rendering content too that has a lot of implications for spatial product training https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13751 https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.13751

ciconia 4y ago

> Seems we're really entering into a golden age of AI-based real-world applications... I wouldn't call moving pixels on a screen "real-world". Are these technologies going one day to have a physical effect on our lives, like, in the real real-world? I very much doubt it.

tough 4y ago
> very much doubt it It's week two, give it two decades. Or come and build some! Amazon in 2000 didnt knew it would become infra for the world with AWS

acomjean 4y ago

>but I kind of expect RPG games with fully AI-generated aesthetics / graphics and stories, I think Dwarf Fortress has the story generation part. The aesthetics/graphics part not yet.. And I think its procedurally generated, but with complex and strange results. https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2ztnkw/i_think_legends_is_my_favorite_mode/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/2ztnkw/i_thi...

vanderZwan 4y ago
> I think Dwarf Fortress has the story generation part. The aesthetics/graphics part not yet.. I suspect Ultima Ratio Regum is a step up from DF even in terms of procgen world lore. I mean the creator (author?) of that game wrote their PhD thesis on the subject https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/ https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/

lukaszkups 4y ago

And imagine that its graphic is being generated on EVERY NEW GAME START so there won't be ever same experiences :O

amelius 4y ago

Speaking of which, is there any good ML-based superresolution algorithm out there? I'm trying to print a poster but some of my figures are in low resoltion ...