Well, if you think that the narcissistic generation and their techie apps have left you behind in the past, well, there’s good news for you. A new app has come around called Bye Bye Camera. Its task: remove humans from any photo.
Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? It is actually an art project but for this project, it’s no longer a high-flung theoretical work. This time, art is being used in a practical way by Do Something Good. Particularly, damjanski, an artist, is behind all this. He has already worked on CAPTCHAs that exclude human beings and thereby, set up conversations between two conversational agents of Google. The opposite of what the regular CAPTCHA does.
How does it work then? The app uses several existing AI tools, two in particular. There is YOLO (You Only Look Once), which is an object classifier. It can detect the outline of a person in the photo. Then, a different tool is used to perform a “context-aware fill” as Adobe calls it. Once the person is removed, the background is auto filled using the context of the remaining background. Best part, it doesn’t even remove dogs – only people.
Well, unsurprisingly, this app produces a moderate picture after processing, but it is still fun. As it is an art project, the purpose of this app is to question us about whether we are necessary in the world? About who we are and whether the world can survive without us?
Well, you can ponder on humanity after using this app. Thankfully, there’s no compulsion for it! Just use this AI tool for fun and have unpeopled pictures. Perfect!