[HN Gopher] Break-a-Scene: Extracting Multiple Concepts from a S...
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       Break-a-Scene: Extracting Multiple Concepts from a Single Image
        
       Author : breakascene
       Score  : 143 points
       Date   : 2023-10-02 13:10 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (omriavrahami.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (omriavrahami.com)
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | An use for AR meeting where one persons can be extracted to
       | another scene
        
       | GraceCat123 wrote:
       | That's really impressive! Are there any limitations or ways to
       | further improve this work? Are the samples shown on the homepage
       | selectively chosen to highlight better performance?
        
       | mitthrowaway2 wrote:
       | I don't know how someone can look at this and not conclude that
       | it's very probable the human brain follows a very similar
       | sequence of steps when we use our own imagination to picture,
       | say, a certain shirt being worn by a cat.
       | 
       | It's either that, or else there are multiple totally-unrelated
       | methods of achieving essentially the same outcome.
        
       | Daub wrote:
       | As an artist, I can observe that (generally) aesthetic images
       | such as paintings or photos, are visually unified. This unity is
       | similar to that of a signature: complex yet uniquely expressive.
       | 
       | this singularity is composed of many elements (themes, forms,
       | subjects etc) and sub-elements. What I would have loved to see in
       | this paper is a means by which the heirachies of these elements
       | can be changed, to produce new heirachies (and therefore new
       | images).
        
         | stronglikedan wrote:
         | I may be misunderstanding what you're saying, but it looks like
         | they may do that in the Image Variations section.
        
       | ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
       | It's so wild to me that the code is just... on github. Like,
       | there's something to be said for all the effort going into these
       | technologies and how freely available it is. A few years ago we
       | would think this was almost undistinguishable from magic, and
       | you'd be excused for trying to raise millions of dollars in VC
       | money to turn it into a company.
       | 
       | Now I can just go run that on my computer.
       | 
       | insane.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Mashimo wrote:
       | That is quite something.
       | 
       | Add a chatGPT like interface where you can communicate by
       | sentences, sprinkle in a bit of speech recognition. And you have
       | computers from 90s sci fi movies. "Computer, give this cat an
       | hawaiian shirt, and make it surf."
       | 
       | The future is now.
        
         | orng wrote:
         | "Give me a printout of Oyster smiling" -
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk
         | 
         | Life imitating art imitating life. Exciting times indeed.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | With cherry picked results, as always, I presume.
        
       | iandanforth wrote:
       | At first I thought this was more of a 'pipeline' paper that
       | chains together existing image extraction like SAM with LoRAs,
       | but I'm impressed by the improvement in visual fidelity they get
       | from doing intermediate end to end training. The union sampling
       | is also not something I would have thought of.
       | 
       | Impressive! Thanks for the release.
        
       | aeronomic wrote:
       | This is wild to me as a portrait/wedding/commercial photographer.
       | Part of me is incredibly excited for the ways tech like this can
       | speed up/dramatically improve my workflow and artistic
       | capabilities. The other part of me is terrified - I shifted away
       | from graphic design with the AI art explosion, but this makes me
       | feel like it won't be long until the average person no longer
       | needs to hire a photographer either.
        
         | Nevermark wrote:
         | This is a harbinger of dramatic change. Scan your whole video
         | and photo library for people, pets, and things, and
         | environments.
         | 
         | Construct new scenes anytime and algorithmically.
         | 
         | "Generate pictures of me with each of my friends, making crazy
         | faces, while drinking mai tai's at my favorite tropical resort
         | bar."
        
           | jncfhnb wrote:
           | But why
        
             | gumby wrote:
             | The use case for me is: "take these five pictures and give
             | me one where everybody is smiling and has their eyes open."
        
               | jncfhnb wrote:
               | Same tech, different concept though.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | Nevermark wrote:
             | I can't actually think of serious reason, but I can think
             | of infinite non-serious uses.
             | 
             | Make real life, "I am so rich and happy with my material
             | wealth and vast travel budget" influencers redundant.
             | 
             | However, I am not looking forward to Facebook spamming
             | friends with ads posing as personal recommendations,
             | showing me at my house happily using sketchy products or
             | butt bleacher.
             | 
             | They will be sneaky: Show me, but with my face obscured in
             | some way. But recognizable. But deniable. But recognizable.
        
           | surfingdino wrote:
           | And pay for storage of those scans, generated images, and for
           | the creation of those images forever( _)
           | 
           | _ or until the VC money dries out and when it does you will
           | have two weeks to download it all.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | > average person no longer needs to hire a photographer either.
         | 
         | Make you can become an independent filmmaker. It seems like
         | creatives won't need Hollywood tools or capital in the future,
         | either.
         | 
         | Musings aside, I'm not so certain people won't need a
         | photographer to be present at weddings anyway. They can't
         | exactly trust that to an appliance. They get one shot to take
         | the pictures, and they need to make it work.
        
           | webmaven wrote:
           | I'm not sure that the photographer present will need to be
           | especially skilled, though. One can imagine an "Uber for
           | Photography" service to get raw material, and you get the
           | final "shots" out of a guided generative ML model of some
           | sort, possibly including some moments that participants
           | remember but weren't actually captured.
        
             | Closi wrote:
             | Depends what you think the skill of a wedding photographer
             | is.
             | 
             | When I have seen an excellent wedding photographer, the
             | skill seems to be 20% photography and 80% people
             | management. Great wedding photographers seem to be some
             | sort of strange combination of entertainer, project-manager
             | and therapist (who also takes photos).
        
           | SamBam wrote:
           | How many people actually remember their wedding poses? I
           | remember being bustled off to the side by the photographer to
           | take our post-vows shots, but the actual poses? No way.
           | 
           | So if you had taken a few of the low quality smartphone
           | pictures that guests took (had smart phones been as
           | ubiquitous when I was married) and a beautiful background of
           | our wedding location, and asked the AI to create some
           | gorgeous portraits of us, with just the right "golden hour"
           | light and the right look of love in our eyes, would the final
           | portraits tucked away in our album be any different? Would
           | they even be better?
           | 
           | It reminds me of the crowds of people in front of the Mona
           | Lisa with their cameras out, so they can own their own,
           | personal, blurry picture of the world's most photographed
           | piece of art, instead of buying the perfectly-lit postcard in
           | the gift shop. What's actually different about that much-
           | ridiculed desire, vs. wanting to have the "authentic"
           | photographs that that the photographer actually took (and
           | then photoshopped, etc.).
        
             | rubslopes wrote:
             | I'm 100% part of the group taking blurry pictures, but
             | that's because I don't care at all about posting. I don't
             | use Instagram or Facebook, all the pictures I take are for
             | browsing my photo library later.
        
             | 101008 wrote:
             | You named it yourself at the end. The difference is that
             | the people took that photo. What's important is not the
             | image itself, the arrangement of pixels, but what it means:
             | for some people means achievign the dream of travel to
             | Paris, for some other people it means "I was here, I see it
             | live", etc. People don't take pictures because they are
             | beautiful or well composed (well, most people), but because
             | the meaning in their lives about that particular event.
             | 
             | That's why I don't think people would like IA to improve
             | their photos of their weddings, or so on. People don't make
             | a wedding to have the perfect photo at sunset, but to have
             | a nice event with people they love, and the photos are to
             | capture that and nothing else. People's favourite photos
             | (and not only from weddigns) are blurry, caught with
             | friends, etc., because those pictures capture the feeling
             | of a good moment.
        
               | Wistar wrote:
               | Back when I was working on a photo-memories app in the
               | early 2000s, a PM said, you know, the photo of the
               | outside of dreary hotel near the beach isn't about the
               | hotel but about the hilarious hotel bar tender you and
               | your friend were entertained by the night before the
               | photo was taken.
        
             | burkaman wrote:
             | I mean, why doesn't anyone do that now? Instead of hiring a
             | photographer to come onsite and spend several tedious hours
             | with you, just email them a single photo and let them
             | Photoshop something good. It's not as cheap as AI, but it
             | should be cheaper than paying for an in-person
             | photographer, and the results can have any background you
             | want.
             | 
             | There's a difference between discovering an old photo and
             | thinking "haha I don't remember taking this one, we looked
             | so good" and seeing it and thinking "haha I don't remember
             | taking this, oh right because it didn't happen". In the
             | second case, there's no reason to even have a photo album
             | or generate anything at wedding-time. Just store the single
             | base photo, and then 50 years later when you want to show
             | the grandkids you can just have the computer generate
             | whatever they want to see.
        
       | og_kalu wrote:
       | The most surprising thing here is a Google Research paper with
       | code release
        
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       (page generated 2023-10-02 23:01 UTC)