<story><title>Show HN: Get a Professional Headshot in Minutes with AI</title><url>https://virtualface.app</url><text>After playing with AI Avatars (like many of us I guess around here), I started to wonder if we could instead bring real value to people by producing affordable professional head-shots using a combination of Dreambooth and ControlNet.&lt;p&gt;Obviously it&amp;#x27;s only the beginning and there are still many imperfections, but the foundational tech behind this (Dreambooth and ControlNet) are only respectively 6 months and 1.5 month old, and already delivers pretty amazing results.&lt;p&gt;I came up with this little service &amp;quot;Virtual Face&amp;quot; and I&amp;#x27;m looking for feedback if some of you are willing to try it (you can use the HUNTER50 coupon to get 50% off, can&amp;#x27;t make it free to try yet since the running costs are still non-negligible).&lt;p&gt;Cheers,
Pierre</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I usually hate dumping on Show HNs, but given the societal impacts of this, I feel the need to be blunt. Call me old fashioned, call me a luddite, whatever, but I hate this.&lt;p&gt;So now &lt;i&gt;even our profile pictures&lt;/i&gt; aren&amp;#x27;t really us, but just some pseudo-reality version of who we think we are. And I know I know, people will argue that makeup&amp;#x2F;airbrushing&amp;#x2F;photoshop&amp;#x2F;facetune has been going on forever, but at some point I feel like we cross the line where it&amp;#x27;s no longer &amp;quot;reality with some touchups&amp;quot;, but instead it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;complete fantasy made to mimic reality&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I just feel like AI is shooting us head first down this state where reality and fantasy are evermore difficult to differentiate, and I don&amp;#x27;t like the implications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barrell</author><text>I get the concern here, and emotionally I share it. Half of my contacts now have very strange AI avatars as their profile pictures and I still recoil a little every time I see them (the avatars). I think it&amp;#x27;s a slippery slope and I don&amp;#x27;t like where it seems to be going.&lt;p&gt;However, rationally, it&amp;#x27;s not like humanity has had picture perfect representations of themselves for very long. For most of our evolution, we relied on paintings &amp;amp; sculptures, which it was up to the artist (or the commissioner) to decide on how &amp;#x27;real&amp;#x27; they were, and they were almost always &amp;quot;complete fantasy made to mimic reality&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;From this lens, the use of unedited real photos of you was the strange period of time, not this AI age we seem to be headed into.&lt;p&gt;Maybe that helps put your mind a little at ease, maybe it just confuses you more (definitely the latter for me)</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Get a Professional Headshot in Minutes with AI</title><url>https://virtualface.app</url><text>After playing with AI Avatars (like many of us I guess around here), I started to wonder if we could instead bring real value to people by producing affordable professional head-shots using a combination of Dreambooth and ControlNet.&lt;p&gt;Obviously it&amp;#x27;s only the beginning and there are still many imperfections, but the foundational tech behind this (Dreambooth and ControlNet) are only respectively 6 months and 1.5 month old, and already delivers pretty amazing results.&lt;p&gt;I came up with this little service &amp;quot;Virtual Face&amp;quot; and I&amp;#x27;m looking for feedback if some of you are willing to try it (you can use the HUNTER50 coupon to get 50% off, can&amp;#x27;t make it free to try yet since the running costs are still non-negligible).&lt;p&gt;Cheers,
Pierre</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>hn_throwaway_99</author><text>I usually hate dumping on Show HNs, but given the societal impacts of this, I feel the need to be blunt. Call me old fashioned, call me a luddite, whatever, but I hate this.&lt;p&gt;So now &lt;i&gt;even our profile pictures&lt;/i&gt; aren&amp;#x27;t really us, but just some pseudo-reality version of who we think we are. And I know I know, people will argue that makeup&amp;#x2F;airbrushing&amp;#x2F;photoshop&amp;#x2F;facetune has been going on forever, but at some point I feel like we cross the line where it&amp;#x27;s no longer &amp;quot;reality with some touchups&amp;quot;, but instead it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;complete fantasy made to mimic reality&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I just feel like AI is shooting us head first down this state where reality and fantasy are evermore difficult to differentiate, and I don&amp;#x27;t like the implications.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>peteralaoui</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not the first time that I hear that, thanks for your radical candor :) and to be frank too, I was also sharing that feeling of a fantasy made to mimic reality when I started this project.&lt;p&gt;It all started when we started to argue with my family members on which avatars looked more like me. It made me realize that we were much more sensitive than I thought about our self-image. Me and my partner would pick different pictures in a set of 10 samples ^^ as if we had two slightly different perceptions of reality.&lt;p&gt;Now, I changed my mind slightly and tend to see these models as an another type of compression of information. Almost like a new censor of data.</text></comment>