My lifeless father is “writing” me notes once more

Rising up, if I needed to experiment with one thing technical, my dad made it occur. We shared dozens of tech adventures collectively, however these adventures had been lower quick when he died of most cancers in 2013. Due to a brand new AI picture generator, it seems that my dad and I nonetheless have yet one more journey to go.

Not too long ago, an nameless AI hobbyist found that a picture synthesis mannequin referred to as Flux can reproduce somebody’s handwriting very precisely if specifically educated to take action. I made a decision to experiment with the method utilizing written journals my dad left behind. The outcomes astounded me and raised deep questions on ethics, the authenticity of media artifacts, and the private which means behind handwriting itself.

Past that, I am additionally glad that I get to see my dad’s handwriting once more. Captured by a neural community, a part of him will stay on in a dynamic method that was unattainable a decade in the past. It has been some time since he died, and I’m not grieving. From my perspective, this can be a celebration of one thing nice about my dad—reviving the distinct method he wrote and what that conveys about who he was.

I admit that copying somebody’s handwriting so convincingly may convey risks. I have been warning for years about an upcoming period the place digital media creation and mimicry is totally and effortlessly fluid, however it’s nonetheless wild to see one thing that looks like magic work for the primary time. It is tempting to say we’re getting into a brand new world the place all types of media can’t be trusted, however the truth is, we’re being given additional proof of what was at all times the case: Recorded media has no intrinsic truthfulness, and we have at all times judged the credibility of knowledge from the repute of the messenger.

This fluidity in media creation is completely exemplified by Flux’s strategy to handwriting synthesis. One of the attention-grabbing issues concerning the Flux resolution is that the ensuing handwriting is dynamic. For probably the most half, no two letters are rendered in precisely the identical method. A neural community just like the one which drives Flux is a big internet of chances and approximations, so the imperfect stream of handwriting is a perfect match. Additionally, in contrast to a font in a phrase processor, you’ll be able to natively insert the handwriting into AI-generated scenes, corresponding to indicators, cartoons, billboards, chalkboards, TV photographs, and way more.

It is price noting that neither I nor the one who not too long ago found that Flux can reproduce penmanship had been the primary to make use of neural networks to clone handwriting—analysis into that extends again years—however it has not too long ago turn out to be nearly trivially cheap to take action utilizing both a cloud service or consumer-level {hardware} in case you have the writing samples available.

Here is how I introduced a chunk of my dad again to life.

The invention

As a each day tech information author, I regulate the newest improvements in AI picture era. Late final month whereas looking Reddit, I seen a put up from an AI imagery hobbyist who goes by the title “fofr“—pronounced “Foffer,” he advised me, so let’s name him that for comfort. Foffer introduced that he had replicated J.R.R. Tolkien’s handwriting utilizing scans present in archives on-line.

Foffer initially made the Tolkien mannequin accessible for others to make use of, however he voluntarily took it down two days later when he started to fret about folks misusing it to create handwriting within the type of J.R.R. Tolkien. However the handwriting-cloning method he found was now public information.