This is how to get that renaissance painting filter that everyone’s talking about

I feel like a work of art x


You may have heard whispers about the Twittesphere recently of an app that can turn your face into a renaissance painting. You may have even seen people sharing it to their story, and been truly confused as to how they’re managing it.

It takes your face and merges it with a filter that makes your picture into a renaissance painting, and the results are… interesting. Some look pretty vibey and some look like you didn’t say no to meth that one time. There’s ten filters available, kind of like VSCO cam, and you can upload as many pictures from your camera roll as much as you want. It’s entirely free and I’m going to tell you how to do it.

What is it?

It isn’t actually an app, it’s a website. The website is called ai-art.tokyo/en, and it’s an Artificial Intelligence artist named “AI Gahaku” which generates canvas renaissance paintings for you from your photos. It merges your picture with a renaissance photo, almost like a facemash but also a filter.

How do I do it?

Head to the website, upload your photo and wait. Then a bunch of filters will appear for you to pick from. Some make you look like a haggard old man and other are actually pretty peng. You might have to try a few selfies and a whole load of different filters to get one that’s IG worthy, but you’ll get there in the end.

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Some are good, some are… not so good

Why is everyone talking about it?

It’s also been embroiled in a bit of drama recently, because non-white people were claiming that the photo comparisons basically made them look white, because none of the filters are people of colour. The creators have admitted to this, with a section before you convert your photo saying: “Currently, we are confirming that the output of the AI artist has been biased. We hope to use a wide variety of learning data and increase the diversity of output in the future.”

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