Gigapixel AI Accidentally Added Ryan Gosling’s Face to This Photo

Photographer Jomppe Vaarakallio has been a professional retoucher for 30 years, but he’s never seen anything quite like this before. While working on an image, he used Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI software to upscale it… and found that the software added Ryan Gosling’s face to his photo.

To be clear, this isn’t a knock on the Gigapixel software. Vaarakallio tells PetaPixel that the software is “amazing” and he uses it all the time. But his experience shows you what happens when computer vision gets tripped up by what looks like a blurry face.

“This image is just a very small portion of the whole image, and I was lucky to find this peculiar thing,” Vaarakallio tells PetaPixel. “When I found it I tried Gigapixel again, and the result was the same… but then I discovered that there is checkbox if you don’t want the software to identify faces. After that the face was gone.”

Here’s the original:

And here’s what it looked like after Gigapixel AI “spotted” Ryan Gosling’s face in the window:

Word to the wise, if you’re using Gigapixel AI to upscale your landscape or cityscape images—and we have to admit it usually works really well—you may want to uncheck detect faces… unless you want Ryan Gosling popping up all over the place.


Image credits: Photos by Jomppe Vaarakallio and used with permission.

Discussion