Face-off/Face-on: When AI Face Swap Goes Hilariously Wrong

Wacky AIs? Yup! you read it right. When face swap goes off and gets you an output that cracks you up, you know that machines will not take over the world for a long, long time and that we are far from being doomed.

However, in defense of our magnificent algorithms (we created them after all, right?!) we have thrown them into a slippery slope with our imaginative ideas by setting them a task in which they lose their bearings.

How Does It Happen?

Basically, it's all math. The AI model is trained for a long time to pick up the face patterns so that it can recognize them in every subsequent case. After a huge number of data sets with face images from different angles, the face as an object of recognition becomes "mathematically embedded".

Then the AI model is able to scan faces in photos and videos and use its cosmetic skills to transplant one face in place of another. This implies that you need to have at least two faces in the photo, but we humans are tricksters and we played with this logic so many times leaving the AI to generate...a picture joke.

When AI Meets The Human Joker

So it is clear that for face swap you must have a base image with at least two faces. And that's where our creativity comes in. With this prior knowledge of facial recognition, someone clever has thought of making an imitation of a face and seeing how the Face Swap Tool solves the conundrum.

The dude put two tangerines and a banana on the kitchen counter and his face was stuck like a sticker on the surface. And his face, you guessed it, looked like a shaggy fruit salad. Who's up for fruitcake?

Another gem of creativity came from a great guy who drew a face on a plate with ketchup and when shown to the AI, he served a head on the plate, while the ketchup suddenly got a beard. Maybe you're into fast food for two?

Something similar happened to a girl who changed faces with a cookie. Aww! She is so sweet we could eat her!

An honorable place belongs to all the people who brilliantly remembered to match their faces with their pets, dolls, babies, stuffed animals, wild animals, etc. ’’Bugg off, you fish face!’’

When A Horror Happens

Remember the face pattern thing? And in that field, AI can fail big time. It simply grabs something that looks like a human from random objects and performs a face swap. The cases we are going to describe really cause the "three wise monkeys" reaction.

It's cute when dads take pictures with their infants, but when the dad's upper lip AI recognizes a facial pattern and pastes it over the baby's face - that looks scary as hell! And dad looks like an alien growing the child’s head on a breathing area.

One teenager was curious if his face swap app would recognize the plug as a face because truth be told, it resembles a lot - the diligent tool did it very well. What a shock wave!

Get ready for the weirdest!

These are some of the strangest cases, where the AI app went so off, that you can show your buddy or BFF a photo with the famous one: "I swear on my grandma's grave, a dead head was floating and hijacked my face while I was taking a selfie!" and he/she would believe you

So, nothing happens, you sit in a log cabin, take a selfie, and in the eyes of the face swap app, wood patterns become your face, while the wooden wall looks like it will speak. ''Pinocchio, where is Geppetto?''

This case of the brilliance of AI is actually not that weird, but it made us roll. Wanting to swap faces with your kid is fun and cute, but when the app grabs two stove knobs and puts the oven handle over the face, it looks twisted.

The absolute winner of this section is the girl with a car wheel rim on her face. Who knows why the algorithms go frenzy in this picture, but we hope that heads were not rolling after this one.

Some Honorable Mentions

Here are some bloopers that really made us chuckle and which, like the previous examples, went around the web and made millions of people laugh.

Yes, children were living remote controls at a time when programs were changed manually, but this AI tool took things too literally. ’’For God’s sake, woman! Blink your right eye, to turn off the goddamn TV!’’

Many people came up with the idea of replacing faces with doodles, and we have to admit that it's very funny and ingenious.

The one when your cat becomes a philosopher and, looking into the distance, thinking what did she do any wrong in her 9 lives to end up like this.

And for the finals...

It is inevitable that AI is rewriting all we used to know about the high-tech, but just when we thought we were outmatched as humans, the opposite is proven. We were so afraid that the machines would work on our heads, and with our creativity and humor, we gave the army of algorithms something they don't have a proper response to.

These are cases where the human factor once again won and proved that being witty is something that cannot be learned mathematically. Therefore, let's laugh at glitches and bugs, because they somehow change our perception of AI and make us feel that it's friendly to us.