[HN Gopher] Using AI to Animate Children's Drawings
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       Using AI to Animate Children's Drawings
        
       Author : infodocket
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2021-12-16 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (about.fb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (about.fb.com)
        
       | chimen wrote:
       | Very nice. I just can't trust FB with my children's
       | time/attention.
        
         | GhettoComputers wrote:
         | Why should you trust any technology that is designed to zombify
         | children into inactivity and media consumption?
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | You probably shouldn't, and I don't think the parent poster
           | would disagree.
           | 
           | Just because they said they don't trust FB doesn't mean they
           | implicitly trust everyone/thing else.
        
             | GhettoComputers wrote:
             | I think we should be careful of addictive technology in
             | general, and it should be seen as a classifier rather than
             | inherent tech innovation or new threats. Video games for
             | instance can be very addicting, I wish I had done things
             | differently. Drugs can be seen as obvious addictions but
             | dopamine hits from electronics isn't seen the same way.
        
       | vimy wrote:
       | Why do they wait with sharing the code and dataset?
        
       | gilbetron wrote:
       | Neat tech, looks like fun! However, I kinda think there should be
       | a requirement with AI techniques like this to show the cases when
       | it doesn't work well, to help cool the hype :)
        
         | hjessmith wrote:
         | That's a good point. FB/Meta did a blog post talking about the
         | tech. There are some failure examples there:
         | 
         | https://ai.facebook.com/blog/using-ai-to-bring-childrens-dra...
        
           | gwern wrote:
           | This or the demo itself should be the actual submitted link.
        
       | andybak wrote:
       | Found a silly sketch of me by my partner and it worked a treat:
       | https://sketch.metademolab.com/share/c9c289362dca4d4d96ee5b4...
       | 
       | Of course the resemblance is spooky.
        
         | kingcharles wrote:
         | My, that's a very long... arm... you have.
        
       | gampleman wrote:
       | Seems like this would be super useful for a 2D game engine,
       | especially one aimed at beginners, where you could sketch a
       | character, describe an animation you want and export a game asset
       | (or even better an editable art asset to fine tune if required).
        
       | Jeff_Brown wrote:
       | Oh, the things we'll get before we get flying cars ...
        
         | coolspot wrote:
         | We have flying cars already, they are called "Cessna".
        
           | me_me_mu_mu wrote:
           | It doesn't look it it will fit in my car port.
        
             | edge17 wrote:
             | You're just living in the wrong place
             | https://www.thedrive.com/news/38555/wide-streets-massive-
             | gar...
        
             | aaron695 wrote:
             | That's the entire point though isn't it. You don't know
             | what you want.
             | 
             | You won't buy a flying car because you won't do on street
             | parking.
             | 
             | People claim they want flying cars but what they really
             | want is AI to Animate Children's Drawings
        
         | forgotmyoldacc wrote:
         | Practical flying cars were invented in 1950:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar. From what I can tell,
         | there wasn't enough demand.
        
       | biasdose wrote:
       | I know this is innocent (maybe not) but who approved this at
       | fb... maybe don't frame this as building AI that will capture
       | kids attentions. Why does it even need to be framed like this...
       | it could be stick figures or ANYTHING. Its comical.
        
       | dqpb wrote:
       | This is impressive. Here is the direct link to the demo:
       | https://sketch.metademolab.com/
        
       | jeffrogers wrote:
       | They just keep coming for the kids.
       | 
       | This isn't even redeemable from a technical perspective as Disney
       | has been doing this same thing on their cruise ships -in the
       | Animator's Palate dining hall- for at least a decade.
        
         | netrus wrote:
         | The technically interesting thing is the automatic generation
         | of the "bones", something the Disney solution does not do -
         | they make you draw your character within a predefined grid.
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | It's definitely technically interesting.
           | 
           | But it's too bad that every new piece of technology nowadays
           | has a huge asterisk attached: please sign away your family's
           | privacy and security, We Promise You Can Trust Us. I guess
           | I'll just have to pass.
        
         | treesprite82 wrote:
         | > This isn't even redeemable from a technical perspective as
         | Disney has been doing this same thing on their cruise ships -in
         | the Animator's Palate dining hall- for at least a decade.
         | 
         | The main interesting part about Facebook's approach is
         | inferring bones from a humanoid drawing (even if other
         | unrelated objects are on the page). From what I can tell off of
         | some Youtube videos, the Disney version has guests draw the
         | bones already separated on a template like this:
         | https://i.imgur.com/AGxvsFq.png
         | 
         | A couple more things Facebook's method appears to handle
         | better, but wouldn't be strictly out-of-reach for traditional
         | methods, are morphing the limbs rather than having them as
         | separate detached parts and identifying which parts of the
         | background are inside of the figure so should be kept opaque.
         | Comparison: https://i.imgur.com/KlJbtqy.png
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-16 23:01 UTC)