NetEase can use AI to turn you into a game avatar with one selfie

NetEase is investing heavily in AI to create better gaming experiences, but it has to contend with rivals like Tencent and Reallusion

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NetEase’s AI can use a standard portrait picture to render a 3D game character. (Picture: NetEase)

Published: 11:19pm, 11 Dec 2019Updated: 10:24am, 12 Dec 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Have you ever wanted to play as yourself in a video game? NetEase has given this old dream an upgrade with artificial intelligence, allowing the company’s flagship MMORPG game, Justice, to construct an in-game model of a player from a single selfie.

A paper from NetEase’s Fuxi Lab, which works on AI, shows how NetEase can reconstruct a person’s image into a 3D avatar from a 2D image. Once the avatar is built, it can start dancing to AI-generated music or be used to talk to AI in-game assistants who compose their own poems.

NetEase said the feature has already been employed by Chinese gamers more than 1 million times. It's a step up from most character creation systems currently available in games, which require players to manually put in hundreds of parameters before getting a lifelike character.

“[Going forward],0 2D pictures will create not only faces but also hairs, expressions and even movements that can make the entire character more lifelike,” NetEase told us.

“Now this technology is just a feature in the game. But we will let game developers create game characters with this technology in the future,” they added.

But these AI-generated avatars don’t just spring fully-formed from a single image. It does require a little user input. A player first has to adjust a few sliders to get the avatar looking just right.

Fuxi Lab prides itself on its ability to create lifelike motion using AI. (Picture: NetEase)