--- title: "This Website Will Turn Your Face Into a Renaissance Portrait" description: "MIT researchers created AIportraits.com to turn selfies into Renaissance art using artifical intelligence." date: "2019-07-22" modified: "2019-10-16" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/aiportraits-renaissance-portrait" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "artificial intelligence" - "generative adversarial network" - "IBM Watson" - "mit" - "the digest" --- # This Website Will Turn Your Face Into a Renaissance Portrait ![]() *\Image: Getty Images/AIPortrait\* ## AIPortraits Hot on the heels of FaceApp, which [makes you look old](), is the next sensation: AIPortraits.com, a website set up by a team of MIT and IBM researchers that turns your boring old selfies into works of Renaissance-period art — as if they were imagined by the likes of Michelangelo or Botticelli. The researchers trained the generative adversarial network with 45,000 portraits "from the Early Renaissance to Contemporary Art," according to the website's "Why" section. The site will spit out your likeness in the style of an undefined renaissance artist — though unfortunately you won't be able to chose which artist the AI will take stylistic cues from. ![]() ## Say Cheese The researchers behind the website want to explore the inherent biases of such an AI system. By exclusively choosing Western artistic traditions, the algorithm will automatically make certain stylistic choices. "We encourage you to experiment with the tool as a way of exploring the bias of the model," reads the website. "For example, try smiling or laughing in your input image. What do you see? \[...\] This inability of artificial intelligence to reproduce our smiles is teaching us something about the history of art." In case you're wondering what happens with your picture after you've uploaded it — certainly a concern for the Russia-based startup FaceApp, which [requested access]() to all the photos on users' phones — the website claims any images uploaded to the site are deleted and not stored. **READ MORE:** [This site turns your selfies into Renaissance portraits with AI]() \[*TechCrunch*\] **More on FaceApp:** *[Earlier Versions of FaceApp Were Incredibly Racist]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()