Remember the old days, when people would talk about a supermodel after seeing them in a magazine ad? "Their skin is so perfect!"
Later on we learned that these photos were airbrushed. After that, artists used computers and Photoshop to touch them up. The model, in fact, looked better than real life because of photo enhancements.
Now that same sort of hidden transformation is coming to movies, as artificial intelligence (AI) can make actors even better than they are and special effects even more perfect.
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Futurism talked to Darren Hendler, who heads up the Digital Humans Group at visual effects company Digital Domain.
"Recently, Hendler and his team used artificial intelligence and other sophisticated software to turn Josh Brolin into Thanos for Avengers: Infinity War. More specifically, they used an AI algorithm trained on high-resolution scans of Brolin’s face to track his expressions down to individual wrinkles, then used another algorithm to automatically map the resulting face renders onto Thanos’ body before animators went in to make some finishing touches."
It's amazing what AI for the Avengers allowed them to do. However, that is just one of the possibilities as artificial intelligence and humans in Hollywood start collaborating together more often.