from the dystopia-is-now,-so-hide-your-checkbook! dept.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/my-dead-father-is-writing-me-notes-again/
Growing up, if I wanted to experiment with something technical, my dad made it happen. We shared dozens of tech adventures together, but those adventures were cut short when he died of cancer in 2013. Thanks to a new AI image generator, it turns out that my dad and I still have one more adventure to go.
Recently, an anonymous AI hobbyist discovered that an image synthesis model called Flux can reproduce someone's handwriting very accurately if specially trained to do so.
[...] I admit that copying someone's handwriting so convincingly could bring dangers. I've been warning for years about an upcoming era where digital media creation and mimicry is completely and effortlessly fluid, but it's still wild to see something that feels like magic work for the first time.
[...] As a daily tech news writer, I keep an eye on the latest innovations in AI image generation. Late last month while browsing Reddit, I noticed a post from an AI imagery hobbyist who goes by the name "fofr"—pronounced "Foffer," he told me, so let's call him that for convenience. Foffer announced that he had replicated J.R.R. Tolkien's handwriting using scans found in archives online .
[...] Foffer's breakthrough was realizing that Flux can be customized using a special technique called "LoRA" (short for "low-rank adaptation") to imitate someone's handwriting in a very realistic way. LoRA is a modular method of fine-tuning Flux to teach it new concepts that weren't in its original training dataset—the initial set of pictures and illustrations its creator used to teach it how to synthesize images.
[...] "I don't want to encourage people to copy other's handwriting, especially signatures," Foffer told me in an interview the day he took the Tolkien model down. But said he would help me attempt to apply his technique to a less famous individual for an article, telling me how I could inexpensively train my own image synthesis model on a cloud AI hosting site called Replicate. "I think you should try it. I think you'll be surprised how fun and easy it is," he said.
[...] My dad was an electronics engineer, and he had a distinctive way of writing in all-caps that was instantly recognizable to me throughout his life. [...] I began the task of assembling a "dad's uppercase" dataset.
[...] using neural networks to model handwriting isn't new. In January 2023, we covered a web app called Calligrapher.ai that can simulate dynamic handwriting styles (based on 2013 research from Alex Graves). A blog post from 2016 written by machine learning scientist Sam Greydanus details another method of creating AI-generated handwriting, and there's a company called Handwrytten that sells robots that write actual letters, with pen on paper, using simulated human handwriting for marketing purposes.
What's new in this instance is that we're using Flux, a free open-weights AI model anyone can download or fine-tune, to absorb and reproduce handwriting styles.
[...] I felt joy to see newly synthesized samples of Dad's handwriting again. They read to me like his written voice, and I can feel the warmth just seeing the letters. I know it's not real and he didn't really write it, so I personally find it fun.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday September 17, @12:40PM (6 children)
I guess we are just different then. But Hell no! When my parents die I'll miss them. But I don't want some AI to send me messages or an AI to copy their voice. They are dead. I'll remember them for as long as I can. But I don't want eternal reminders. It will suck enough when they go. It will be uncanny. I'll know they are dead. I don't want to get reminders of that from some machine.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crm114 on Tuesday September 17, @01:15PM (4 children)
I tend to agree.
My closest friend in the world (my mother) died just after the Berlin Wall fell. Think about how the world has changed since then. I got the call at 8:00am, worked a full day, drove 13hrs to be at the family home, and was told to crash in the bed she died in. I still cry.
You are right. I treasure the notes and letters she wrote while I was away from the family. Those are my memories. I have 2 photographs of her, and rarely look at them. The memory is in my mind - the cadence of her voice, her advice on how to make sure the girl you like is actually good for you, her advice on how to be a good person. No way an AI could ever replicate the life lessons my mother shared when I was sitting on the kitchen counter soaking up decades of pain and hard experience. Her life lessons have served me well.
But. I have also learned we all grieve differently. And if this person finds comfort from seeing something that looks like his father's handwriting, and if typing "I love you my child" brings them comfort? I am happy for them.
We all need comfort.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday September 17, @01:41PM (3 children)
I agree with you 100%!
I have physical reminders of my late wife around the home; the odd photograph, some of her art, mementoes that meant something to both of us, or that marked some of her proudest achievements during her too short life. But the most valuable are my private memories which nobody else can share with the same emotion that I have for them.
Over 3 years later I am still grieving. I am not breaking down into tears everyday, or unable to move on with my life or things like that. Just every now and then something triggers a particular memory and I realise how much I miss her and how big a part she played in my life. I find solace in many unusual things and if a person enjoys receiving messages from an AI which remind him of happier times then good for them.
What I find the most strange being a man is the lack of close physical contact with somebody else. I live a significant distance from any other family members. Some 8 months after my wife died I visited my brother-in-law and his family. My sister-in-law treated me just as she has always done and gave me a big hug. I was reduced to tears instantly. That was the first meaningful physical contact with another person since my wife had died. It still has exactly the same effect over 3 years later.
Hug every family member - one day either they or you will remember it.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crm114 on Tuesday September 17, @02:21PM
Amen. It is those unexpected triggers that bring back the memories and emotions.
We all need to be kind to each other.
Peace to everyone here.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 17, @02:26PM
The very moniker "Stages of Grief" seems to suggest you'll get over it someday. It's just a "stage". I think not. My parents have been gone 5 years now, and I still miss them, and I always will. One of the more painful jabs tech delivered on that was the day my smartphone dropped their phone number from my list of contacts because they hadn't called lately.
Of late, the previous generation's departures have been accelerating. 3 uncles and an aunt gone, and a bunch of their 1st cousins likewise. Just 1 aunt left, the youngest one, and she's 88 and declining.
For the sake of the young, I carry on, and tread carefully about saying things that drag them into sharing my sadness.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 17, @05:22PM
I'm sorry for the loss of your wife.
A couple years ago, my wife and son went with her parents to drive out west to see where her father's parents came from.
Almost every day, i'd be thinking "She'd be interested in this" and go to tell her, but then remember she wasn't home. This made me think of what it would be like if she died before me.
Gave me a sad feeling. With her leukemia and other health problems, it is most probable she will go before me and it's strange to think about.
Tell everyone you love that you do love them. Make sure they KNOW it. And hug them. You never know when it will be their turn. Or yours.
But no... i wouldn't want to live life like nothing had changed. I wouldn't want an AI assistant to talk in her voice, wouldn't want a hologram/video/? of her in every room to talk to. I'd rather remember her how she was, not be reminded of what i'm missing and be stuck in the past forever. I think that would be like dying myself.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Insightful) by EvilSS on Tuesday September 17, @10:51PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday September 17, @02:25PM
Combine this handwriting generator with the recent release of almost all "secret" social security numbers, and we have the conditions for a nearly perfect storm of infinite cloud-based financial fraud.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday September 17, @02:36PM (3 children)
I enjoyed my parents when they were alive, I grieved when they passed away, and now they live in my memory and all the things they taught me and advised me over the years contribute to make me a better person (I think) in my later years.
As life intended.
The absolute last thing I want is a fucking machine desecrating and ruining my parent's memory, and telling me fake shit they never said to me when they were alive. That would be debasing the fine human beings they were - not to mention recreating them with a machine trained or run by one of the current crop of dystopian big tech sumbitches for monetization purposes - so fuck that with a wire brush.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 17, @05:25PM (2 children)
JESUS! You just made me imagine that if Trump did get assassinated, would the GOP just roll out a robot of him, talking like him, spewing nonsense and acting like he had never died....
We (you americans and the world) could be stuck with him forever.
Jesus wept. Might as well bring back the Four Horsemen.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 3, Touché) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 17, @08:14PM
No BODY can be elected president more than twice! Nixon wins again! AROOOOOO!!!
Let's hope that the Republicans are generally too humorless to have seen Futurama.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by terryk30 on Wednesday September 18, @01:09AM
In other words, AI hallucinations? What you fear may have already happened... (But now we have an explanation for Trump.)
(Score: 3, Touché) by tangomargarine on Tuesday September 17, @08:12PM
That was entirely too long of a summary, until I skimmed and hit "neural networks to model handwriting" in the third-to-last paragraph.
So more AI bullshit. Nope. Next!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 17, @11:43PM
Asimov story [wikipedia.org] about a device that can look into the past. I haven't read it in a while, but cherish the real living memory, don't pollute it with something artificial.
A Russian operative has infiltrated the highest level of our government. Where's Joe McCarthy when we need him?