Hollywood actress co-authors research paper with Indian-origin engineer

Hollywood sensation Kristen Stewart and an Indian-origin research engineer have come together to formulate an Artificial Intelligence that makes digital shots or images look like impressionistic paintings. The star recently used the research to make art in her upcoming film.

Hollywood’s ‘Twilight’ fame Kristen Stewart and an Indian-origin research engineer have co-authored a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) system that can digitally transform movie shots to look like paintings.

Based on the method of machine learning – a type of AI, the transformation process will be able to make movie shots look like impressionistic paintings.

The research paper uses the process of machine learning known as ‘style transfer’ to convert the desired image or shot into the colour profile and artistic technique of another image.

This digitising process is unlike Snapchat and Instagram filters which too transform images. What those filters do is either change the colours of the entire image or recognise certain points like the eyes or lips in an image and animate them.

This machine learning system however works differently on different images and learns about the subject as it goes ahead in the process.

“What current filters do is, they work with the information in the image. A global operation like Instagram is just a colour lookup,” says lead author Bhautik Joshi, a research engineer at Adobe Systems in the US.

To create effects, Snapchat and Instagram use filters that are based on rules created by a human being; “If you come across this condition, do that to the image,” Joshi explains.

Contrary to this, the new AI system breaks down the image into blocks, identifies its various components and then compares it to a reference image which the user will feed in the system.

For instance, if the user wants to make an image look like as if it was painted in the style of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Nights’, the software will look for corresponding features in the image that you want to alter, using a technique based on so-called neural networks.

“Sometimes, the results can be unpredictable, because unlike with the Snapchat filters, the computer is learning as it goes through the images,” says Joshi.

Stewart has used the AI to create art in her screenwriting debut, ‘Come Swim’. The 17-minute film stars Josh Kaye and Sydney Lopez, and has been written and directed by Stewart.