AI-driven Creative Apps for You and Your Kids: Paint a Picture

Pix2Pix

Already a year old, but still fascinating experiment by Zaid Alyafeai (GitHub): a TensorFlow implementation of Image2Image translation.

Pix2Pix demonstration, Source: github.com/zaidalyafeai

Pix2Pix is well explored, especially in various articles of Towards Data Science. It translates a doodle into an image using pattern recognition and being trained on specific well-labeled photo datasets.

This web-based application provides a kid-friendly interface with input and output windows and various pre-trained models: Cats, Facades, Pokemons, etc.

What about drawing a Pokemon?

PROs:
? easy to use
? experience of pix2pix as one of the most relevant models
? fun to experiment around with

CONTRAs:

? probably nothing

GauGAN

Another level is achieved by this one. And I bet your kids will be addicted to GauGAN. This GAN-based implementation, provided by NVidia AI Lab, converts segmentation maps to photorealistic images.

Segmentation maps are differentiated by colors and attributed to various materials and contents: sky, clouds, trees, buildings, etc.

The segmentation picture on the left: doodled by my daughter. The image on the right is processed in real-time by GauGAN. Screenshot: Merzmensch.

In case you use a tablet — or in my case, it's a touch-sensitive display of a laptop, your kids can draw with hands (instead of a mouse). Haptic experience!

There are also plenty of Style Transfer presets trained on various models. Creativity meets surprise = this is an Eldorado for your kids. And you also can, in passing, explain to your kids the principles of image segmentation.

Here is a demo of GauGAN:

PROs:
? easy to use
? wide field for experiments
? dozens of segments and presets

CONTRAs:

? (…still looking for some downsides…)

Colorizing your kids’ drawings.

Your kids also surely love to draw, in a fully analog mode (with pencil on a paper). What about letting AI colorize your kid’s artworks?

There are various colorizing implementations out there. One of them is Petalica Paint, former known as PaintsChainer, provided by the Japanese online artist community Pixiv.

You can draw within a tool or upload your kids’ sketches. The quality of the original file doesn’t really matter. I’ve shot my daughter’s sketches with a smartphone. And this is the result of our AI-driven experiments:

Or this:

As you see, even abstract drawings by your kids can be colorized in surprising ways.

PROs:
? always surprising
? supports even abstract doodles

CONTRAs:

? missing 3D effect from the previous versions

Index: AI-driven Creative Apps for You and Your Kids.

This is an edited version of my Essay at Towards Data Science.