Disney built an AI that can easily make actors look younger or older

Disney researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that makes it easier to make an actor look older in a scene. Artists will still be able to make manual adjustments to make sure the effect is realistic, but most of the work will be done by the artificial intelligence tool. The aging effects can be applied to a single frame.

Artists have to go through a scene frame-by-frame to change the appearance of an actor. Neural networks and machine learning have been tried before to automate the process. Disney's researchers note that, while they might work well for still images, other systems tend to suffer from facial identity loss, poor resolution and unstable results. The first practical, fully-automatic and production-ready method for re-aging faces in video images is claimed to be offered by their solution.

It would not be possible to train the neural network on a dataset of real people. Pairs of images showing a subject with the same facial expression, pose, lighting, background and age would be required. The researchers created a database of thousands of faces. The synthetic faces were re-aged using existing machine learning aging tools.

The neural network can predict which parts of a face will be affected by aging and then apply effects like wrinkling or skin smoothing to the original face. The researchers claim that they can re-age the performer with their identity and appearance intact even when their head or face is moving. An extra face alignment step is not required with other methods.

There are many reasons why Disney wants to develop a tool. It could speed up the process and reduce visual effects artist workload. It may help keep ballooning budgets in check by helping productions age their actors up or down. A large portion of The Irishman's budget was spent on making Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci look older.

The de-aging of performers has been done by Disney. Harrison Ford will look a little younger when he reprises his role as Indiana Jones in the summer of 2020. Disney's new re-aging tool should speed up the process of taking years off the faces of performers in the future.