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Redditor creates working anime QR codes using Stable Diffusion
- smusamashah 3y agoMore threads generating working images from QR code which still work: https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/141hg9x/controlnet_for_qr_code/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/141hg9x/co... https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143qz65/my_qr_code_but_spicier_workflow_included_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143qz65/my... https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143w30f/this_one_scans_on_iphone_and_on_the_aspose/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143w30f/th... https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143u5x6/my_second_attempt_on_qr_code_finally_did_it/ https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/143u5x6/my...
- PostOnce 3y agoThis is an amazingly beautiful hack. I'm kind of surprised we never saw something like this done by hand before the advent of SD -- plenty of QR code art, but none of it like this. I'm impressed.
- boringuser2 3y agoIt's for sure brilliant.
- jacknews 3y agoThere are quite a few doing them by hand, eg https://dribbble.com/shots/3658816-Art-QR-Code-Design https://dribbble.com/shots/3658816-Art-QR-Code-Design I seem to remember some NY artist trying to sort of vaguely claim/intimate invention (falsely) by having an exhibition too. Ah yes, here https://art-qrcode.com/ https://art-qrcode.com/
- chromoblob 3y agoAs much as I like to distrust ML algorithms to give exact, reliable results, here I actually think that a random picture that aims to be a QR code that is also drawn manually will have much lower chance of QR code recognition code than ML-generated one, because it's hard to manually restrict the work so that it is reliably recognizable by many QR implementations while also "integrating" QR code features with art features so that they are not obviously two independent layers one laid on top of another.
- evrimoztamur 3y agoIt's costly to make such images, that's about it. Other way around you'd have to decide on the QR, wait for the commission, pay a substantial amount of money. Probably wouldn't even get such subtle codes either, this seems like straight up CV-trickery.
- ENGNR 3y agoI wonder if this would work by simply using out-painting to preserve the black dots, to make a background, and then use in-painting on the dots with the condition that they stay dark
- jacknews 3y agoYes, both white and black dots though. So long as the 'central' 30% ish of each grid location is appropriately 'light' or 'dark', it will scan.
- asynchronous 3y agoThe use of controlnet to preserve the important parts of the QR code was genius here.
- _boffin_ 3y agoI believe this will be widely adopted and quickly too! Fantastic work!
- makeitdouble 3y agoBeautiful work! From the title I was expecting the QR codes to move, but they're actually "anime drawing style", not "anime"
- spiffytech 3y agoDoes that mean the accurate term would be "manga"? I've never been sure if the only difference between the two is still frames vs motion, or something else.
- lmm 3y ago"Manga style drawing" would be misleading since manga are drawn in black and white.
- codetrotter 3y agoBut the cover art of manga is often colour. So it should still count as manga even if it has colour IMO
- lmm 3y ago"Manga style drawing" would be generally understood to mean looking like 188/190 of the pages of a manga rather than looking like 2/190 of the pages of a manga.
- bryans 3y agoYour pedantry is neither appropriate nor correct. Manga is most often black and white purely because of time and budget constraints, not because manga's style is defined as black and white. There are tons of full-color manga, and many that become popular have color editions released.
- lmm 3y ago> Your pedantry It's not pedantry. I'm trying to convey some actual understanding here. These drawings aren't manga-style, you can tell because they don't look like (typical) drawings from manga; most obviously in that they're not black and white. > Manga is most often black and white purely because of time and budget constraints True but irrelevant. The style of the medium coevolved with those constraints and is suited towards them (as with most media). A manga-style drawing is stylised in particular ways that (among other things) allow it to look better in black and white than a typical drawing would. > There are tons of full-color manga, and many that become popular have color editions released. They exist (indeed I own some) but they are the exception rather than the rule. Again, "manga-style drawing" would be generally understood to mean a drawing that looked like a typical drawing from a manga.
- beefman 3y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213763
- aim4min 3y agoImagine if some construction company created a whole neighborhood that from the right vantage point would be a valid QR code.
- poochy 3y agoFun to imagine in the abstract. I used to take classes in a building designed to have a certain appearance from above, and the user experience was definitely the worse for it
- Smoosh 3y agoNot one like this I hope. https://www.googlesightseeing.com/2007/09/the-swastika-building/ https://www.googlesightseeing.com/2007/09/the-swastika-build...
- tomekb 3y agoOld Maxtor campus in Milpitas was supposed to look like an HDD https://goo.gl/maps/JbRWqZseAVL14n167 https://goo.gl/maps/JbRWqZseAVL14n167
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- alanbernstein 3y ago1. Secretly repaint one wall of a house and redirect the qr code to a slightly different url 2. ??? 3. Profit
- cperciva 3y agoNot possible -- QR codes have error correction.
- chromoblob 3y agoIt is possible, you only have to replace also the correction stuff
- prvc 3y ago>This discovery opens up new possibilities for both digital art and marketing. Like hiding malicious URLs in public.
- netsharc 3y agoHah, even without the hacking angle, having URLs to promote shit popup when you point your camera somewhere could be the next obnoxious advertising. For a few years now phone cameras have been able to automatically detect QR codes, maybe their next feature will be an option to turn off "smart features"...
- dcow 3y agoIt's all in preparation for Apple Vision. Everything you see will link to something...
- LodeOfCode 3y agoThe alignment squares here are a pretty big giveaway, and it seems like it'd be really difficult to fix that without making them unscannable
- rjh29 3y agoOr making QR codes harder to read on certain cameras or lighting conditions by removing the error correction!
- xg15 3y agoNow, who wants to combine this with the tutorial from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36173441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36173441 and decode one of those by hand? :)
- don-code 3y ago> Next, they fed existing QR codes into the Stable Diffusion AI image generator and used ControlNet to maintain the QR code's data positioning despite synthesizing an image around it, likely using a written prompt. A few months ago, after seeing that ChatGPT could produce reasonably accurate MD5 hashes, I tried generating QR codes with a Midjourney prompt. It failed in a really interesting way - it generated _symmetric_ QR codes, even though QR codes are explicitly designed to be asymmetric (think of the timing pattern, the three large blocks). So while I could claim ChatGPT "understood" MD5 hashes, I can't claim that Midjourney "understands" QR codes. How long until generative models can produce working QR codes on their own?
- IceWreck 3y agoForget QR codes, until very recently Stable Diffusion and Co could not generate legible text in images.
- dustypotato 3y agoCan they now? I had the impression that stabled diffusion is not moving forward that fast because the original team that built it is not the ones that are in stability.ai
- IceWreck 3y agosome guy in /r/stablediffusion made a lora that can do that (or maybe a derivative model, dont remember which)
- fennecfoxy 3y agoIt's the human handwriting vs computer font problem. We can't expect a font out of ML, only handwriting.
- scatters 3y agoIf you zoom out they are very recognizably QR codes. A commenter made the point that what you're seeing in that case is the low frequency component of the image. Kind of like the Marilyn Monroe / Albert Einstein illusion.
- AlfeG 3y agoThis kind of QR codes should work nice on big billboards
- GolDDranks 3y agoSomething I learned recently: the phrasing "QR Code" is a trademark of a company called Denso Wave, who invented them. While the method of producing and reading QR codes is free for all, (Denso Wave waived their rights to the patents) they still protect their trademark. This has lead many Japanese companies that use QR codes, to call them publicly something else, such as "2D codes", in fear of getting sued.
- albert_e 3y agoI have seen them called "Quick Scan Code" or something similar in some ads.
- mikeyouse 3y agoHuh. Turns out it's a subsidiary of the same Denso that's a massive automotive supplier and largely owned by Toyota. Asian conglomerates are so interesting.
- Shawnj2 3y agoIIRC they created them in the first place to make manufacturing easier
- constantcrying 3y agoNothing compared to european conglomerates, which do wastemanagment, auction horses and build fighter jets...
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoI dunno, marital aids (sorry, muscle massage wands) and nuclear reactors is a quirky mix.
- Freak_NL 3y ago> marital aids Vibrators. Hitachi is also known for their powerful, corded vibrators (it's not a dirty word): the Magic Wand. Calling these 'marital aids' in 2023 seems a little outdated. Vibrators are devices used for sexual stimulation, which obviously makes them extremely useful for solo masturbation as well, in addition to being a sex toy someone can use on another person.
- selcuka 3y agoI guess the next step will be someone who converts themselves to a living QR code via plastic surgery and makeup.
- recursive 3y agoWorking seems like a stretch. I can't get any of them to scan.
- ssd532 3y agoWorking for with iPhone's scanner.
- Cyphase 3y agoWhich app are you using? For most of them I needed to get a few feet away, as mentioned in the article. For some it seemed I needed to be more exactly facing it, not angled. I got all of them to scan pretty easily.
- recursive 3y agoI'm using the default camera on my phone. It's called "Camera". The phone is a Samsung Galaxy. I've tried it close, far, angled, straight, big, small. I haven't gotten any of them to work a single time.
- planede 3y agoWorks mostly fine for me from Firefox on Android. All scans fine except one.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoI would absolutely love to see these instead of regular QR codes everywhere
- est 3y agothe scanned result redirects to qrbtf.com, which OP ported some QR libs into javascript [1] notably they also implemented the "Halftone"[2] style. [1] https://github.com/ciaochaos/qrbtf https://github.com/ciaochaos/qrbtf [2] http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/halftone_QR/halftoneQR_sigga13.html http://vecg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/Projects/SmartGeometry/halftone_QR/...
- dspillett 3y agoThat is impressive. I know the images will have been selected for the fact that they are particularly good examples, but I've seen a number of implementations of trying to mix a photo into a “standard blocky code” (the girl and Trump examples on that page) and none previously produced results quite that good. I shall have to have a play.
- CGamesPlay 3y agoThis would pair excellently with a WiFi QR code for restaurants showing their Wifi password. (eg: <https://qifi.org https://qifi.org>)
- bemmu 3y agoI love how every news outlet reporting this will essentially be forced to link to the author's site if they want to include the image.
- teekert 3y agoThe internet is flooded with these in one day, but at least this one does not work for me (iPhone 12 mini), it does detect the face of the lady. Edit: Ok, it does work at a larger distance.
- slooonz 3y agoFor the love of sanity, please don’t. In real life, I struggle enough to scan normal QR codes when the redundancy of error correction is here to… you know… correct errors and help the scanning process.
- junon 3y agoThis is so insanely cool I don't even know where to begin.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoYou could try scanning it
- fennecfoxy 3y agoMy phone (Samsung S23U) couldn't read the first image. It found the face, it found the text on the page, it highlighted sections in case I wanted to copy the image/text, but no QR response.