62% of women want to erase an ex from their memory photos, according to a recent survey by online dating site OKCupid. The dating app has teamed up with Photoroom to create Erase Your Ex, a sort of “Ex-Terminator”, which is an AI tool that deletes your ex-partner from a photo.
The idea is that you can free up those perfectly good photos of yourself with your former partner and use them on your dating profile to find a new future ex-partner. This seems perfectly healthy and not at all like the plot to the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
The video itself is very tongue-in-cheek, complete with a catchy song about “setting yourself free…but keeping the selfie“, all in a 70s disco style. I rather liked it and was keen to try it out on one of my own photos, just for strictly professional reasons, obviously.
The examples shown on the webpage are impressive. The unwanted distraction (in this case, the ex-partner) is seamlessly removed by running a brush over the area. Arms that were previously hidden reappear on the remaining person.
Unfortunately, the photo I tried it on wasn’t very impressive. It removed the unwanted person. However, they were left as an amorphous grey blob. None of the background was reproduced or replaced, and my right arm was still missing.
Now, one caveat. I have a pretty good co-parenting relationship with my ex-partner, so I didn’t want to inflame that by using his photo. So I tried it on a photo with my bestie instead, who I most definitely don’t want to erase. So perhaps there’s some mysterious witchcraft going on, and the AI can detect whether it’s a legit breakup; who knows?
According to OKCupid’s report, most of the people surveyed said that they wanted to remove their ex in order to rebuild their lives, not merely so that they could re-use the photograph. While not seeing constant reminders of your old flame certainly might help with moving on, I’m not sure that denial is a good substitute for acceptance and time.
This ex-removal app seems almost too good to be true. If you really want to remove your ex from a photo I’d probably recommend the boring old Photoshop route, it just works better. And with Generative Fill, you can turn them into anything you want. If only the heartbreak could be removed just as easily with AI.
[via petapixel]
