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FaceApp apparently now has race filters. I never got the humor in these.

A

Alienous

Member
Snarky(HEART) said:
It's OK to admit that you were having fun with something that's also problematic. You don't have to pretend it's not problematic
Click to expand...

I don't think it's problematic.

It makes one face look more like the aggregate average face of another race.

Any other controversy comes from outside of the app.
 
D

DiipuSurotu

Banned
aBarreras said:
keanureaveswhat.jpeg
Click to expand...

6ngfdd5.jpg
 
R

RenditMan

Banned
Looks at the amount of harmless fun people are having in this thread.

Sees the fun police have managed to get it pulled double quickly.

Sigh.
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Alienous said:
I don't think it's problematic.

It makes one face look more like the average face of another race.

Any other controversy comes from outside of the app.
Click to expand...
I can't believe it need to be stated that minorities have various subsets that have different average features........
 
F

Frozenprince

Banned
Crossing Eden said:
They pulled it as a result of backlash, people should do more thinking about why that backlash occurred in the first place. Not all minorities have the exact same features so to have a "black filter" makes no sense. It only serves to perpetuate stereotypes. So if someone has an issue with them pulling a stupid feature due to the backlash then those people need more perspective instead of saying "nofunallowed" as if digital blackface is supposed to be fun. Rather, it's better to acknowledge why people had a problem with it in a first place.
Click to expand...
If they redo the filters so maybe they aren't so stereotypical (why does the Indian one need facial hair?) it would be better. But yeah as they were, shit was kinda sus on it's best day.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
Haha that's pretty cool.

But I have no idea how it works. Sometimes it allows me to add the new effects...sometimes it just shows the old ones.
 
A

aBarreras

Member
RenditMan said:
I needs to be stated that there's some parts of the world where "minorities," are not a minority. This app us available there too.
Click to expand...

yeah, i mean im not a minoritie here in mexico since im mexican,

saying "minorities" is such a U.S. centric thing to say
 
Thelonelykoopa

Thelonelykoopa

Member
Aww I checked my app to see that it was removed didn't even get to fiddle around with it. Oh well at least the new hipster filter shows me what I would look like if I could grow facial hair.
 
A

Alienous

Member
Crossing Eden said:
I can't believe it need to be stated that minorities have various subsets that have different average features........
Click to expand...

Those subsets go all the way down to the individual. But there are distinct, broad racial groups.

The app takes a face and makes it look more like the aggregated average of the faces (presumably celebrity faces) within broad racial groups. 'White', 'Black', 'Asian'. It doesn't purport to do anything else.
 
J

JKRMA

Banned
Wait I downloaded, do not see these options. Did I miss something from the OP?


Edit: Just read the article again where it said they will remove the options in next few hours. Boo, do not see how this is racist. It's the person using it with the racist connotations who would be racist.
 
D

deadlast

Member
So I tried this app and I make a handsome black and Indian fellow. My Asian version looked weird because of my GoTee.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Two Words said:
So does everybody's black version have a bigger nose/lips? Because not every black person has that and it is an annoying stereotype. People that come from certain parts of Africa do have that trait, but North East African facial structure is very distinct from West African facial features. It's annoying how African is often treated as a single entity in this way.

I myself am North East African and I have a smaller nose and larger lips.
Click to expand...

This isn't something the developers have intentionally programmed it to do. It's a neural network trained on huge libraries of stock photos and photos of celebrities. Many/most black celebrities are African Americans, and they quite often tend to have those features. So that's how it ends up.
 
B

BlackRainbowFT

Member
Crossing Eden said:
The people offended by the idea that not all minorities look the same or have the same features and thus, it's probably a really stupid move to have a feature in an app that implies the opposite are indeed too easily offended.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I understand but, in any case, if it has been done with neural networks, then there are two scenarios I can think of: a) the learning material was biased b) "on average" those "races" really have those features.

So yes, you can build a prototypical white guy, or a prototypical black guy. But I do know that an Eritrean doesn't look like at all like a Congolese. Like an Italian doesn't look like a Norwegian. There's an average and then there's variability. The neural networks takes that variability as an input to compute said average...

it all depends on what you feed the neural network with.
 
R

Ravensmash

Member
RoadHazard said:
This isn't something the developers have intentionally programmed it to do. It's a neural network trained on huge libraries of stock photos and photos of celebrities. Many/most black celebrities are African Americans, and they quite often tend to have those features. So that's how it ends up.
Click to expand...

This would likely explain the other races too.

That's a fascinating insight actually - does it also learn from the pictures taken by users?

Maybe it'd diversify naturally over time as more users from more ethnic groups picked it up.
 
K

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
Kalentan said:
So how did this work? Was there some sort of photoshop program that ran off of looking for points on a face or did it look for similar looking faces and then apply those faces on top?
Click to expand...
It's a neural network that modifies faces according to their algorithm and what you select.

Developed and self-funded by a small group out of Russia in eight months, the app uses CUDA, TITAN X Pascal GPUs, Tesla K80s and the cuDNN-accelerated TensorFlow deep learning framework to train their deep generative convolutional neural networks. The app then sends the selfies to the cloud (Microsoft Azure’s Tesla K80 GPU instance) to transform them.

https://news.developer.nvidia.com/this-ai-selfie-transformation-app-can-even-make-mona-lisa-smile/
Click to expand...
 
A

Ampersands

Member
Such a bummer that this was taken down so quickly. The tech was genuinely impressive and as a minority, I certainly wasn't offended by it. It's all algorithm-based; they're not personally changing faces based on stereotypes.
 
A

aBarreras

Member
Ravensmash said:
This would likely explain the other races too.

That's a fascinating insight actually - does it also learn from the pictures taken by users?

Maybe it'd diversify naturally over time as more users from more ethnic groups picked it up.
Click to expand...

well, no more, because is DEAD jim DEAD
 
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