Viral face-swap app Reface has launched an artificially intelligent (AI) tool that transforms the subject of a selfie into a different character. Reface's new "AI Avatar" tool can take the subject of an image and put them in a new setting, outfit, pose, and aesthetic of the user's choice. The new tool allows users to generate a dozen ready-made art styles. In photos published on Reface's blog, the iconic television character Mr. Bean is transformed into Batman, Spiderman, and a Game of Thrones character using the AI Avatar tool. Meanwhile, the Reface app has also turned actor Johnny Depp into the Hulk and superhero, Captain America, with the help of AI Avatar.

Or Lionel Messi wasn't just a hero on the pitch, but also flew around wearing a cape? Well imagine no longer, as a new tool can take your favourite celebrities and turn them into hyperrealistic works of art in whatever situation you choose. That means that Johnny Depp can replace Chris Evans as Captain America, and Mr Bean can sit on the Iron Throne in'Game of Thrones'. The app, Reface, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to take the subject of an image and put them in a new setting, outfit, pose and art style. The'AI Avatar' tool has been trained on different art styles and themes, and can apply them to new images.

Buzzy face-swapping video app Reface is expanding its reality-shifting potential beyond selfies by letting users upload more of their own content for its AI to bring to life. Users of its iOS and Android apps still can't upload their own user generated video but the latest feature -- which it calls Swap Animation -- lets them upload images of humanoid stuff (monuments, memes, fine art portraits, or -- indeed -- photos of other people) which they want animated, choosing from a selection of in-app song snippets and poems for the AI-incarnate version to appear to speak/sing etc. Reface's freemium app has, thus far, taken a tightly curated approach to the content users can animate, only letting you face swap a selfie into a pre-set selection of movie and music video snippets (plus memes, GIFs, red carpet celeb shots, salon hair-dos and more). But the new feature -- which similarly relies on GAN (generative adversarial network) algorithms to work its reality-bending effects -- expands the expressive potential of the app by letting users supply their own source material to face swap/animate. Some rival apps do already offer this kind of functionality -- so there's an element of Reface catching up to apps like Avatarify, Wombo and Deep Nostalgia. But it's also going further as users can also swap their own face into their chosen source content.

Buzzy face-swap video app Reface, which lends users celebrity'superpowers' by turning their selfies into "eerily realistic" famous video clips at the tap of a button, has caught the attention of Andreessen Horowitz. The Silicon Valley venture firm leads a $5.5 million seed round in the deep tech entertainment startup, announced today. Reface tells us its apps (iOS and Android) have been downloaded some 70 million times since it launched in January 2020 -- up from 20M when we spoke to one of its (seven) co-founders back in August. It's also attained'top five' leading app status in around 100 countries, the US included -- as well as bagging a'top app' award in the annual Google Play best of. That kind of viral growth clip has been turning heads all over the place.