Just when you thought that anime character designs couldn't get any more generic, machine learning comes to the rescue:
A collaborative team from Fudan University, Carnegie Mellon University, Tongji University and Stony Brook University have created a generative adversarial network (GAN) that can generate high-quality anime character drawings with just minimal input from humans. You can check the demonstration website and make your own anime renders by inputting some basic preferences.
You can choose hair and eye color and then decide on what accessories you might like such as glasses, hats or ribbons. The site will then generate a character for you based on your inputs. There are some things that could be improved for sure, but overall, it's a really fun application.
Researchers used a technique called DRAGAN to train the AI. The demo site was built on ReactJS. The scientists have summed up the full process in more detail in this technical report. The source code is also available from here.
Of course, designing a character is only the first step. How about a custom Gatebox holographic waifu? Or import your character into an advanced VR fantasy world powered by petaflops GPUs. Which is just a stopgap measure until you jack into the Matrix directly, allowing you to caress your loved one (as far as your brain is concerned).
Is this what happens when you poach Carnegie Mellon University's top scientists?
"Moe" (pronounced "mo-ayyy") refers to "kawaii"/cute characters.
Related Stories
While Uber Technologies Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University announced a partnership to develop autonomous car technology in February, Uber's actions earlier in the year have left Carnegie Mellon's robotics research in jeopardy:
Carnegie Mellon University is scrambling to recover after Uber Technologies Inc. poached at least 40 of its researchers and scientists earlier this year, a raid that has left one of the world's top robotics research institutions in a crisis.
Uber envisions autonomous cars that could someday replace its tens of thousands of contract drivers. With virtually no in-house capability, the San Francisco company went to the one place in the world with enough talent to build a team instantly: Carnegie Mellon's National Robotics Engineering Center.
Flush with cash after raising more than $5 billion from investors, Uber offered some scientists bonuses of hundreds of thousands of dollars and a doubling of salaries to staff the company's new tech center in Pittsburgh, according to one researcher at NREC.
The hiring spree in January and February set off alarm bells. Facing a massive drain of talent and cash, Herman Herman, the newly elevated director of the NREC, made a presentation May 6 to staff to explain the situation and seek ideas on how to stabilize the center, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The short presentation at the school here laid out the issues. In all, Uber took six principal investigators and 34 engineers. The talent included NREC's director, Tony Stentz, and most of the key program directors. Before Uber's recruiting, NREC had more than 100 engineers and scientists developing technology for companies and the U.S. military.
Original Submission
The future is apparently here. And it's creepier than we ever imagined—even when we were playing around with tethering Teddy Ruxpin to the Internet. A Japanese company called Vinclu ("a company that makes crazy things and supports crazy people") is now taking pre-orders from Japan and the United States for a new interactive, artificial-intelligence driven home automation system. Called Gatebox, the new Internet-of-Things product takes Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, Spike Jonze's film Her , and the "holographic" anime characters of Vocaloid concerts to their unified natural conclusion.
Wait, what?
Gatebox, priced at ¥321,840 (about $2,700 US), is squarely targeted at young lonely salarymen and all brands of anime-obsessed otaku—promising the experience of "living with your favorite character." The size of a home coffee-maker, with a footprint no larger than a sheet of A4 printer paper, the device's main feature is a clear projection tube that displays a computer-animated avatar for the AI's "character." Vinclu apparently is planning multiple possible personalities for Gatebox—which, as part of the device's backstory, is a gateway to the dimension the character lives in.
A company like this could release the first strong AI product (kawaii slave?).
Beginner's definition of "waifu" for the uninitiated.
Update: Another article indicates that "[There's also] HDMI and PC inputs to allow the owner to make their own modifications and create their own characters."
A Game You Can Control With Your Mind
When you pull the headset over your eyes and the game begins, you are transported to a tiny room with white walls. Your task is to break out of the room, but you cannot use your hands. There is no joystick or game pad. You must use your thoughts.
You turn toward a ball on the floor, and your brain sends a command to pick it up. With another thought, you send the ball crashing into a mirror, breaking the glass and revealing a few numbers scribbled on a wall. You mentally type those numbers into a large keypad by the door. And you are out.
Designed by Neurable, a small start-up founded by Ramses Alcaide, an electrical engineer and neuroscientist, the game offers what you might call a computer mouse for the mind, a way of selecting items in a virtual world with your thoughts.
Incorporating a headset with virtual reality goggles and sensors that can read your brain waves, this prototype is a few years from the market. And it is limited in what it can do. You cannot select an object with your mind unless you first look in its general direction, narrowing the number of items you may be considering.
But it works. I recently played the game, which has the working title Awakening, when Mr. Alcaide and two Neurable employees passed through San Francisco, and a few hundred others tried it this month at the Siggraph computer graphics conference in Los Angeles.
The prototype is among the earliest fruits of a widespread effort to embrace technology that was once science fiction — and in some ways still is. Driven by recent investments from the United States government and by the herd mentality that so often characterizes the tech world, a number of a start-ups and bigger companies like Facebook are working on ways to mentally control machines. They are also looking for smoother ways to use virtual reality technology.
"Neurotechnology has become cool," said Ed Boyden, a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the M.I.T. Media Lab who advises one of those start-ups.
The article also discusses Elon Musk's company Neuralink.
Related: Elon Musk Launches Company to Link Your Brain to a Computer
Neuralink Aims to Market a Brain-Computer Interface Product Within 4 Years
Brain-Computer Interfaces Revolutionized Using Silicon Electronics
University Researchers Band Together to "Make Girls Moe"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @09:49PM (15 children)
Fuck me. I've been mucking computers since the 70s, making a living off it for several decades, and nothing in TFS make any sense to me.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday August 18 2017, @10:14PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday August 18 2017, @10:19PM (2 children)
Scrappy-poo?
;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday August 19 2017, @07:34AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 19 2017, @11:33PM
They knighted him???
My wife calls him penis head: she likes Janeway ('natch) while I'm old school Kirk.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 18 2017, @10:58PM (1 child)
I wonder how much tax money went into this.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 18 2017, @11:48PM
👋 It's worse. They are only making 128 × 128 head shot versions of virtual dress-up dolls with a japanese cartoon theme. 💢
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Friday August 18 2017, @11:21PM (6 children)
It's about low-grade Japanese animation technology. Crap that replaced Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, and Popeye.
You know, Geezer stuff.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by takyon on Friday August 18 2017, @11:40PM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLF4NjTNr1o [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:07AM
That socially and emotionally complex dialog, skillful artwork, and deep world crafting is what they're showing their children. Meanwhile western kids get bright colored high contrast flash animations with loud & screeching voices and infantile plots.
The social engineering is beyond obvious.
(Score: 1) by d(++)b on Saturday August 19 2017, @04:52AM (2 children)
Popeye was too fuckin' surreal for me... I'm 55, I remember all the old cartoons. (We called it "Saturday Morning").
Chuck Jones, Yes. Hell Yes. Hanna-Barbera? Uh sure, some of it (dumb kids gotta wake up on weekends too). Felix the Cat? Hey Grandpa, you liked some weird shit!
But Popeye? No. No thank you. Seen 'em all. Popeye=bad acid. baaaaad baddd acid.
I'm a wee bit glad that you young hipster douchebags never experienced the mind-fuck that was Popeye the Sailor.
There's a big difference between Fake News and Surreal News. Let's hope we don't find out about the subtleties in the next few years. (Ahgggh Agh Agh Agh Agh)
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:56PM
Maybe it was the acid that was bad. Lotta strychnine going around in those days.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 19 2017, @11:46PM
Felix the cat?
Watch Fritz the cat: dat be sum weeeeird shit dere, man.
Naked pigs and aardvarks and cats, oh my! (No Sulu, though, lol).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 19 2017, @11:39PM
You want low grade... Watch the old Spiderman where he swings from the same building frame after frame almost, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:50AM
From one geezer to another: Github is a website that holds source code under revision control. If you ever used RCS, CVS, Subversion, or Mercurial it's a little bit like that.
A "VR fantasy world" is like the old Circarama at Disneyland, except with video instead of film. Also the characters in the video reacts to what you do.
With a waifu, there's no actual fucking, partly because she's imaginary and partly because you respect her too much.
Tongji University and Fudan University are in Shanghai.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:09PM
Same, except 80s and I even watched a bunch of anime back in the 90s. Still completely indecipherable.
I live near CMU, perhaps I can go smack some sense into them.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday August 18 2017, @11:00PM (7 children)
Site did not work for me
And it didn't have options for cat, bunny and fox ears.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 18 2017, @11:05PM (1 child)
It worked for me when I submitted it. Now it says "Network Error".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @11:31PM
It was the Soylent effect. All Three Soylent users crashed the server.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 18 2017, @11:15PM (3 children)
Scratch that, it comes down to allowing javascript on the site. If you do that it will likely work.
True story on the ears though. Maybe they are looking for a grant.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:17AM (1 child)
Reminds me of the good ol' days on Soylentnews, when all everybody did was bitch and moan.
At least we have (somewhat) proper discussions now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:32AM
Except for stupid comments by stupid people.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday August 19 2017, @06:48AM
HTTPS Everywhere broke it for me.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @11:31PM
Or breast size and pantie color.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 18 2017, @11:27PM (2 children)
Don't need a computer... just a sofa, some wine, and Barry White on the stereo.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday August 18 2017, @11:30PM
Yeah, moan about the headache they've suddenly acquired.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 18 2017, @11:42PM
You forgot the quaaludes [businessinsider.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:09AM (11 children)
Well, feminists, here's who to blame. These are the people you hold accountable. Took me two seconds. Is holding individuals accountable for their own actions really that hard?
How long should I give this until it's part of the misogynerd narrative? 2 weeks? 2 months? Should I start a betting pool?
I admit I don't have the data to gender these people based on name. I can extrapolate from other data sets, even finding a good-sounding motivation for this research, though mostly the data point that men really are stupid enough to publish this shit during a resurgence of the misogynerd narrative. >.<
A pox on both your fucking houses!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:24AM (2 children)
<sarcasm>Nah dude, only heteronormative white males are sexist. This is why I've decided to give my self a chance in the leftist / progressive world by converting to Islam. This way I can beat and rape my wife at will without any mention of patriarchy.</sarcasm>
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 19 2017, @03:07AM
Is that how it works now? Maybe my knowledge really is out of date. I remember there used to be quite a lot of anger among feminists about Islam, particularly about how it's culturally comorbid with routine infant female genital mutilation. Heh, I used to be with them, until I figured out that what happened to me was perhaps worse but that feminists would systematically shut down any dialogue about routine infant male genital mutilation with “OMG Mooooooooslims!” How things change.
Either that or I can go with my previous data point about men really being that stupid and guess you're a man and you've even less an idea what you're talking about than I do.
I haven't bashed men in a while. This feels kinda good. If you men weren't such fucking idiots, I wouldn't run into nearly half the problems I do with feminists. maybe none at all. After all, everything I end up getting held accountable for in that collectively and severally way is something one of you dumbassed men did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:13PM
No, feminists are against Asians too. They have privlidge because they are too smart.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:08AM (4 children)
Huachun is a unisex name. [themeaningofthename.com] Ruling planet: Uranus
Zhihao is a unisex name. [themeaningofthename.com] Ruling planet: Uranus
Yingtao is a male name. [themeaningofthename.com] Ruling planet: Sun
Minjun is a unisex name. [themeaningofthename.com] Ruling planet: Mars
Yanghua is a unisex name. [themeaningofthename.com] Ruling planet: Mercury
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @05:31AM (2 children)
Those are the family names...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @07:58AM
Doesn't having a unisex family, you know, prevent you from ever being conceived?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 21 2017, @06:19AM
Wrong. And some ignorant fool modded you informative.
Those are Chinese names and the majority (not all) of Chinese family names are single syllable. The odds of all of these being family names are very low.
Even lower odds of all of them being compound family names AND none of them being any of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_compound_surname [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:16PM
You can stick your ruling planet up Uranus.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:44AM (1 child)
Oh gods, I graduated from Stony Brook. Ick, ick, ick. This makes me feel gross and greasy just to read about.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 19 2017, @02:34AM
Hahahahahaha.
Wait a sec, gotta take it to the next level.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🐙
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Monday August 21 2017, @10:38AM
You were about to presume their gender based on name? Words fail me.
(Score: 2) by deimios on Saturday August 19 2017, @03:05AM (1 child)
It is common knowledge that moe exists only in 2D space.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:49PM
There might be a hand-waving 👋 solution to that. For example, just declare VR to be 2D because you are ultimately looking at flat smartphone-sized screen(s). For the neural VR, just say it is moe's graduation to 3D. It could also be possible to simulate an anime style where every frame perceived by the eyes still looks kind of flat. Not sure if that would make the user puke, but that's why we have early adopters.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday August 19 2017, @06:02AM
Would be nice to have in MMOs like WoW:
1. Implement fully on both client side and server side.
2. Have users play around offline with settings and noise file until satisfied with result.
3. Let users upload noise file and settings for reproduction server side.
5. Reproduce on the server from user data. Use the result as the online char portrait.
This way you get decent portrait customization without risking users uploading pornographic content.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday August 19 2017, @08:12AM (6 children)
Someone needs to teach the students about how their predecessors made clever use of the "é" character so English-speakers would have a clue at how to pronounce names/titles like Pokémon without being told "yeah, we're totally spelling it 'Moe' but it's suppose to be pronounced moe-ayyy."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @11:05AM (3 children)
Cool, now I just have to find it on my keyboard! :)
(I have yet to see anyone write it (ctrl-c, ctrl-v) "Pokémon" in chat/comments/etc.)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 19 2017, @12:41PM (2 children)
Let me help you: Pokémon.
Typed without Control-C and Control-V. However I've configured me a compose key, which helps entering ȧ łøţ øḟ şṫṙąņġẽ çħàṙâčṫēṙš.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 19 2017, @02:00PM (1 child)
Well, I gots me a Japanese keyboard, so I have to insist that Pokemon should be written ポケモン, and moe should be written 萌え :)
Entering non-ASCII character sets should have much better support from the OS, especially when they're not present on a keyboard!
In other news, apparently there is a .moe TLD [wikipedia.org] *facepalm*
"Intended use: The marketing of products or services deemed moe" what the fuck *facedesk*
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday August 20 2017, @03:02AM
On Unix and LInux, that support should be part of X, and not foisted off on the desktop environment.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Saturday August 19 2017, @01:48PM
I kinda like that explanation, it makes me imagine the Fonz in a labcoat while telling people about molybdenum.
Which I guess is one step up from the Szyslak mental image the headline gave me
(Score: 1) by nnet on Saturday August 19 2017, @03:37PM
damn, you blew it for me, I was staying with the three stooges' moe.