Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Want to turn a Second Life avatar pic into the "photo" of their real life analog? Watch this Artbreeder tutorial from Ugleh Ulrik, the SL creator who first started the whole buzz around using the AI-driven platform to transform avatars.

"I do a lot of experimenting with new AI tech," Ulrik tells me, "and once I saw Artbreeder my first thought went to Pixar characters but then after that I realized making Second Life avatars more real was a possibility and I tried it out on a few close friends and it worked well."

Here's his key tips to keep in mind when using Artbreeder on an avatar:

"The AI can do what it can do because it has sourced portrait photos from millions of existing photos. That means that the AI doesn't know things like face tattoos or other accessories that are uncommon."

For instance: "ArtBreeder understands glasses but probably not heart shaped glasses. Out of the millions of photos they have processed maybe a handful has heart shaped glasses, so the AI can not comprehend what that is.

"So my advice for people wanting to RL-ify their avatar is to remove uncommon accessories, take only photos neck high, and the AI has more experience working with closed mouths then open ones, but in the end you can always 'close' your mouth using the gene editor."

Post your own experiments in Comments below!