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I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

nytimes.com

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#21
post #18

Environment plays a large role in facial appearance. Weight, diet, habitual emotional expressions, facial hair, to say nothing of acne, injuries, facial exercises (for the muscles in the face) or reconstructive surgery. Maybe they could divine how close the eyes are or how big the nose is... but even that doesn't seem terribly accurate from these picture. I suppose the technique will get better soon enough, but I dou…

There isn't really room for anything between this method and outright cloning, is there?

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#23

I've been waiting to see something like this, it's very neat (if somewhat unrefined). Now apply OldBooth and we'll be able to see what our babies will look like. Brave New World here we come!

I think it will need another 5 years of development before we can get even near that.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#24
post #10

Quite interesting however the portraits really have almost no resemblance to the subjects. Yeah they look kinda "similar" but virtually every facial feature other than base racial feature is incorrect. All of the renderings attempt to pretty much render a racially correct "grey face" which can pretty much fit almost anyone. Everything else from the shape and position of the eyes, nose bridge, cheekbones, lips etc. do…

Agreed. It seems like nutrition, illness/disease, and random developmental quirks would all drastically affect the actual shape of a human's face between birth and adulthood. You might be able to predict a range of faces to account for these differences, I guess, but then you have a broad range of faces that might match a broad range of people...

WHAT? No! Have you forgotten the fact that identical twins actually look...well, identical? Face features clearly have a very very very very high heritability.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It seems like nutrition, illness/disease, and random developmental quirks would all drastically affect the actual shape of a human's face between birth and adulthood. You might be able to predict a range of faces to account for these differences, I guess, but then you have a broad range of faces that might match a broad range of people...

WHAT? No! Have you forgotten the fact that identical twins actually look...well, identical? Face features clearly have a very very very very high heritability.

Twins share the same environment in the 1st 9 months, when their faces are formed.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHAT? No! Have you forgotten the fact that identical twins actually look...well, identical? Face features clearly have a very very very very high heritability.

Twins share the same environment in the 1st 9 months, when their faces are formed.

Usually yes but that doesn't change the fact that face features are highly hereditary. I find it very hard to believe that someone could try to deny this. It's basic biology really.

What are you suggesting here exactly? What exactly is the environmental trigger in the womb that forms the faces if not genes?

May I kindly remind you about the concept of dizygotic twins, that is, twins that share the womb but do not share an identical genome. Please explain why they don't look identical.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#27
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It seems like nutrition, illness/disease, and random developmental quirks would all drastically affect the actual shape of a human's face between birth and adulthood. You might be able to predict a range of faces to account for these differences, I guess, but then you have a broad range of faces that might match a broad range of people...

WHAT? No! Have you forgotten the fact that identical twins actually look...well, identical? Face features clearly have a very very very very high heritability.

If you disagree, please explain your reasoning, don't just downvote. Thanks.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twins share the same environment in the 1st 9 months, when their faces are formed.

Usually yes but that doesn't change the fact that face features are highly hereditary. I find it very hard to believe that someone could try to deny this. It's basic biology really. What are you suggesting here exactly? What exactly is the environmental trigger in the womb that forms the faces if not genes? May I kindly remind you about the concept of dizygotic twins, that is, twins that share the womb but do not sha…

I'm not saying faces aren't determined by hereditary factors, only that there are also other factors. Almost all of the 'identical' twins I've seen had subtle differences.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#29
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually yes but that doesn't change the fact that face features are highly hereditary. I find it very hard to believe that someone could try to deny this. It's basic biology really. What are you suggesting here exactly? What exactly is the environmental trigger in the womb that forms the faces if not genes? May I kindly remind you about the concept of dizygotic twins, that is, twins that share the womb but do not sha…

I'm not saying faces aren't determined by hereditary factors, only that there are also other factors. Almost all of the 'identical' twins I've seen had subtle differences.

Yet those differences are, as you said, subtle, that is, very small. That means that, in the context of this article, there is no huge range of faces we can determine from genes, but the genes (when we know them) actually determine the face very very precisely as proved by identical-twin-resemblance. The predicted faces in the article are fuzzy not because environment has a great impact but because our knowledge of the genes that form our faces is still very limited.

Re: I’ve Just Seen a (DNA-Generated) Face

#30
post #5

Those are the results with a training set of 7000, I imagine it would get spookily accurate with a 50K training set.

Where'd you get that number?

Just a guess. The faces were pretty close but for a few angles here and there.
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