If you've ever struggled with designing the perfect avatar, one company may be able to help. Startup Loom.ai has created a technology that produces an entire avatar from a single still photo.
The startup's website allows users to upload an image, either of themselves or someone else, and Loom.ai's software will generate a 3D animated avatar that resembles the image. The tech relies upon a combination of computer vision, machine learning, and special effects to create the custom avatar.
The company has already released example avatars based on celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Kanye West, and Elon Musk.
The software isn't perfect, though. Perhaps most noticeably, it has no idea what to do with hair. There are also a bunch of small details it doesn't quite get right, and seems to be limited to only a handful of facial expressions.
Still, this technology has a lot of potential. It could be used to generate virtual reality avatars, giving the experience a more realistic feel. So in the future, the only thing you'd need to do to create an avatar is take a picture.
