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Transform Yourself Into An Anime ‘Waifu’ With This Quick Online AI Tool
By Thanussha Priyah, 04 May 2020
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Image via Shutterstock
You can now turn yourself into an anime character with an online image style transfer tool called ‘Selfie 2 Waifu’.
The online tool allows you to upload a selfie to generate an anime version of yourself. The term “waifu” is often used in Japanese anime culture, referring to anime crushes or “wives.”
According to Motherboard, it is based on a paper published in 2019 called, “Unsupervised Generative Attentional Networks with Adaptive Layer-Instance Normalization for Image-to-Image Translation” by a group of researchers from South Korea’s Clova AI Research, gaming company NCSOFT, and the Boeing Korea Engineering and Technology Center.
The website is credited to a programmer from Japan, known as Creke, who did not take part in the study but thanked the researchers for the algorithm, which was later used for ‘Selfie 2 Waifu’.
As the database is filled with images of over 7,000 anime women, Motherboard reported that the tool works better for females than males. There aren’t any privacy policies declared on the website but many are still trying out the tool for themselves at their own risk and sharing their results on Twitter.
While some have attained beautiful anime versions of themselves, there are also terribly morphed outcomes as well. The website recommends uploading selfies that are “clear and big” with a “simple background” to get the best result. Check out some of the generated images below.
So I did the selfie 2 waifu thing... XD
— Ash (@Sugoi_Ash) April 30, 2020
What do you think? Hahaha pic.twitter.com/Z8xsOaXjz3
I found "Selfie 2 Waifu", and this is the first thing I do. pic.twitter.com/1s6Q9Ee3Y6
— Al. Lopez (@AL2009man) April 29, 2020
i did the selfie2waifu thing lol pic.twitter.com/67p0YleE2N
— caity (@caiitys) April 26, 2020
The selfie 2 waifu gave me purple eyes... & I luvvv pic.twitter.com/o6iVB6CZUM
— Rayne⁷ (@raynegutter) April 28, 2020
trief the selfie 2 waifu trend. look at this abomination. I'M WHEEZING. pic.twitter.com/bW0yR8vBlS
— Schnuu (@schnuuwu) April 26, 2020
[via Motherboard, cover image via Shutterstock]
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