PiktID Uses AI to Generate Unique New Faces for Commercial Photography
PiktID is a new software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that allows photographers to replace people in their photos with synthetic faces, which the developer says offers numerous benefits to commercial and advertising photographers.
PiktID’s developers explain that its software can “keep people” and “remove identities.” The software’s three key features are face replacement, identity generation, and face editing.
The face replacement and identity generation features can protect people’s privacy and help photographers create new non-existing faces. PiktID says that replacing the faces of real people in photos allows images to be used commercially without a model release or worrying about the privacy of individuals, which can be especially useful for photographers taking street photographs or pictures in busy areas. This is also important when contending with privacy laws in specific areas.
PiktID promises to maintain and preserve the aesthetics and overall look of photos with people while generating new faces. This is important when working with photos of children, either for educational institutions or marketing campaigns. While companies and schools want photos of children for public relations and advertisements, there are potential issues concerning the privacy of children. PiktID can change the look of a child, so that the original model is unrecognizable.
Identity generation and face editing features offer further benefits, per PiktID, including the ability for users to tailor AI-generated faces to specific demands, including certain facial expressions, ethnicity, or age.
Going beyond creating a new non-existent face for commercial viability and complying with data protection, PiktID hopes to achieve commercial success by enabling companies to use AI to generate more diverse images of people and target advertising for specific groups of people.
It’s been shown repeatedly that people in different countries and within diverse cultures have varying beauty standards. Some photographers have fought against prevailing ideas of beauty, which can sometimes be quite damaging to people.
Nonetheless, companies want to sell more products, and an effective way to do that is to make marketing materials that appeal to wider groups of people, which can include changing people’s apparent ethnicity. PiktID says that it allows users to “customize models and fit them to any market” and “retarget advertising photos for specific groups.”
Speaking directly to photographers, PiktID also says it can help photographers develop an expanded portfolio by allowing images of a small group of models to appear more diverse and interesting.
For photographers and designers alike, the software’s AI model enables faster face retouching, allowing users to easily adjust facial expressions.
Pricing and Availability
PiktID includes a couple of purchasing options for users. People can pay on a subscription basis and buy different numbers of credits, where each credit allows for one face generation. Subscription plans start at €19 per month, which equals €0.63 per credit for 40 credits. More expensive plans can reduce the per-credit cost down to €0.39 per credit.
A one-time payment “pay as you go” option allows users to purchase bundles of credits for higher costs per credit.
A free trial allows users to test the software with 10 credits, although the face generation in the free trial is described as “low quality.”
A detailed breakdown of subscription and purchasing options is available on PiktID’s website.
Image credits: PiktID
