Video game developer uses AI to recreate faces of ancient Chinese emperors
- Independent developer Hu Wengu has recreated the animated faces of Chinese emperors from the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties
- Some Chinese internet users suggest that Hu tackle a new project – recreate the faces of legendary beauties from ancient China
Hu Wengu, an independent Chinese video game developer and programmer, has used AI tools to recreate the animated faces of Chinese emperors from the Song, Ming and Qing dynasties – a period that dates more than 1,000 years – based on the historical portraits of these monarchs.
In a video shared on Sunday, Hu showed the recreated faces with moving expressions of four emperors from the Song dynasty, which reigned from 960 to 1279. This dynasty’s founder, Emperor Taizu of Song, is known for reunifying most of China by ending the tumultuous Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
To add another layer of realism, Hu also used SeetaFace, an open-source facial recognition tool developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to calculate similarities between the AI-restored faces with those of the actors who portrayed them in Chinese period drama shows and films.
In a separate video on Monday, Hu showed the recreated faces of eight emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties – which ruled from 1368 to 1644 and 1644 to 1912, respectively – as well as a Qing dynasty empress.
Hu’s Song dynasty video went viral on Chinese social media on Monday and became a trending topic on microblogging site Weibo, where it generated more than 48 million views and 4,000 discussions.
Impressed by his restoration work, some netizens have already suggested Hu’s next project – recreate the faces of legendary beauties from ancient China.
Still, other Chinese internet users were not impressed by Hu’s recreations. They said the paintings that formed the bases of his work did not provide the true faces of the emperors. “No one living has seen what the emperors from Song really looked like,” Weibo user Weiyoushuxianglai wrote in a post. “The court painters would have beautified or spoiled the historical figures for various reasons, which makes it impossible to know the real faces.”
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In his Weibo post, Hu made it clear that the restored faces are the results of what AI derived from the portraits of the emperors. “The original painters must have their own artistic approaches in portraying the emperors,” Hu wrote. “Is this what emperors in history really looked like? We still don’t know, but the recreation by AI has brought me new-found feelings [about this endeavour].”
Hu previously recreated the moving faces of China’s 2,000-year old terracotta warriors and virtual characters in classic Chinese literature. In another project, Hu recreated the faces of historical figures such as Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty. He was also behind a video that used AI to restore colour to black-and-white footage of old Beijing, which went viral in China earlier in May.
