Landmark Assisted CycleGAN: Draw Me Like One of Your Cartoon Girls

In an iconic scene from the 1997 film "Titanic," Kate Winslet's oceangoing character Rose asks charming artist Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) to "draw me like one of your French girls" -- that is, reclining nude on a chaise lounge. A flustered Jack obliges and this kindles a romance, but -- spoiler alert -- the ship hits an iceberg and Jack perishes protecting Rose from the icy North Atlantic waters. On a more robust vessel who knows what additional portrait styles the young lovebirds might have explored. For example, with the help of a new AI algorithm, Jack could have drawn Rose as a cute cartoon character. A group of researchers from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Harbin Institute of Technology and Tencent have proposed a method to create such cartoon faces from photos of human faces via a novel CycleGAN model informed by facial landmarks.