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Artificial intelligence
Tech

Video game developer uses AI to recreate faces of ancient Chinese emperors

  • Independent developer Hu Wengu has recreated the animated faces of Chinese emperors from the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties
  • Some Chinese internet users suggest that Hu tackle a new project – recreate the faces of legendary beauties from ancient China

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Independent Chinese video game developer Hu Wengu says the recreated faces of ancient Chinese rulers, such as Emperor Taizu of Song, were generated by artificial intelligence technology based on ancient paintings. Photo: Handout
Iris Deng
In a span of more than 4,000 years, many great emperors have ruled China. While people know them through what has been depicted in books and ancient illustrations, artificial intelligence (AI) technology now makes it possible to put a realistic face on a number of these historical figures.
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Hu Wengu, an independent Chinese video game developer and programmer, has used AI tools to recreate the animated faces of Chinese emperors from the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties – a period that dates more than 1,000 years – based on the historical portraits of these monarchs.

In a video shared on Sunday, Hu showed the recreated faces with moving expressions of four emperors from the Song dynasty, which reigned from 960 to 1279. This dynasty’s founder, Emperor Taizu of Song, is known for reunifying most of China by ending the tumultuous Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

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Hu relied on PaddleGAN, an open-source machine learning project by Chinese internet search giant Baidu, and Artbreeder, an online AI tool that mixes and alters images, to recreate the emperors’ faces. In addition, Hu used a system called AI Studio to capture his own facial expressions and apply them to those faces, giving them more lifelike expressions.
In recreating the face of Emperor Taizu of Song, developer Hu Wengu also used SeetaFace, an open-source facial recognition tool to calculate similarities with actors who portrayed the emperor in Chinese period drama shows and films. Photo: Handout
In recreating the face of Emperor Taizu of Song, developer Hu Wengu also used SeetaFace, an open-source facial recognition tool to calculate similarities with actors who portrayed the emperor in Chinese period drama shows and films. Photo: Handout

To add another layer of realism, Hu also used SeetaFace, an open-source facial recognition tool developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to calculate similarities between the AI-restored faces with those of the actors who portrayed them in Chinese period drama shows and films.

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