deerstalker

Have you ever wondered what you’d look like an old timey portrait? You know, the kind of dust-covered, golden-framed oil paintings that hang on the walls of haunted houses, eyes following you as you walk about the room? Well, now you don’t have to guess, because a very terrifying website has invented a classic portrait generator for you to use. Just upload your selfies to aiportraits.com and behold–there’s your face rendered as a piece of classic art. Totally normal, right?

AI Portraits Ars is a widget built by the researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab that transforms uploaded selfies into fine art by using an algorithm of 45,000 classical portraits. “We have trained Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) models to reproduce human portraits, with different styles and levels of abstraction,” the AI Portraits website explains. The full extent of the science used is a little hard to understand in layman’s terms, but the researchers essentially taught GAN models to generate new paintings based on classic portraits rendered in oil paint, watercolor, or ink.

Unlike previous versions of this technology, the algorithm is not painting over your face, but is instead generating brand new features from scratch. The AI then “decides” which format it will take. If you don’t like the version it comes up with, try another selfie–you’ll be amazed at the different results the site is able to come up with every time.

The website maintains that while photos are sent to the site’s servers to generate the portraits, they won’t use data from the photos for other purposes and will immediately delete them. That makes this technology a bit less scary than the Russian-owned FaceApp, which has been transforming the internet’s faces into older and younger versions of themselves at an extreme cost to privacy.

Of course, privacy concerns notwithstanding, you’ll still have to gaze into your own creepily detached eyes as they exist in AI generator form. Which is it’s own kind of scary, regardless of how impressive this tech is.

Images: AI Portrait Ars

The post Turn Your Selfies Into Classic Portraits With This AI Widget appeared first on Nerdist.

Mahmee, a maternal healthcare startup, recently closed a $3 million round led by Arlan Hamilton of Backstage Capital. Other investors include Mark Cuban, Serena Williams for Serena Ventures and Pipeline Angels, among others.

The platform allows physicians and specialists to use the Mahmee to share care plans and stay on the same page about mom and baby’s care options. New and expecting parents get a personalized dashboard for linking mom and baby’s health records and tracking health over time so that Mahmee care managers can provide ongoing support and education.

“In the maternity healthcare process, on the surface, there are generally three or four people involved: the mother, the baby, and each of their physicians. What we don’t see are the many other people helping them: nurses, lactation consultants, midwives, nutritionists, therapists, doulas, home health aides, social workers, and more,” said Melissa Hanna, CEO and co-founder of Mahmee in a statement.

“And this industry is lacking the IT infrastructure needed to connect these professionals from different organizations to each other and to follow and monitor patients across practices and health systems. This missing element creates gaps in care. Mahmee is the glue that connects the care ecosystem and closes the gaps.”

“I am incredibly excited to invest and partner with Mahmee, a company that personifies my firm’s investment philosophy,” Williams stated in a recent press release. “Given the bleak data surrounding maternal death and injury rates, I believe that it is absolutely critical right now to invest in solutions that help protect the lives of moms and babies. Mahmee’s data-driven approach is the right solution to one of the most significant problems in the system: that of fragmented care.”

The investment has a personal connection for Williams. She had a near-fatal experience delivering her first child, which she recounted in-depth in an interview with Vogue. Her revelations helped shed light on the sub-par maternal healthcare black women often receive, and the high black infant mortality rates.

Previous investors included Cross Culture Ventures, Acumen America, The Helm, Bumble Fund, and several others.

Marvel announced that it is bringing back its blockbuster franchise Blade, but a new face will be replacing Wesley Snipes.

A new version of Blade, starring Mahershala Ali fresh off his Emmy nomination, is on the way. Marvel revealed the great news at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 on Saturday.

Ali was on hand for the reveal of the good news.

No release date was announced and little else was shared.

Blade first appeared on screens in 1998 with Snipes taking on the starring role. The first installment is reported to have grossed an estimated $131.2 million at the box office and Wesley later reprised the role for sequels in 2002 and 2004.

At the Comic-Con event, Marvel Studios’ President Kevin Feige officially announced the lineup of feature films for the next two years and shared exciting new information on the brand-new Marvel Studios’ series created exclusively for Disney+, Disney’s upcoming streaming service launching in the U.S. on November 12.

Anthony Mackie, who plays The Falcon was on hand to greet fans after it was announced that his character will appear on the Disney+ original series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in the fall of 2020.

Tessa Thompson also came on stage for some Thor: Love and Thunder news, which will be the fourth feature film in the Thor franchise. It was revealed that Jane Foster, played by Natalie Portman, will become the Mighty Thor, the Goddess of Thunder.

We can expect some exciting programming from Marvel

The post Mahershala Ali To Star In ‘Blade’ Reboot appeared first on Essence.

Warner Bros. had an exciting opening to Comic-Con with their Scare Diego presentation of IT: Chapter 2. Hosted by Conan O’Brien, select fans and press were invited to preview the trailer and several scenes from the upcoming sequel. The director, Andrés Muschietti, and cast were on hand to answer some questions surrounding what was presented, […]