Photorealistic portraits of Roman Emperors created with the help of AI tool

October 1, 2020

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Ancient Roman emperors' faces have been brought to life in digital reconstructions; the unnervingly realistic image project includes the Emperors Caligula, Nero and Hadrian, among others.

The features of these long-dead rulers have been preserved in hundreds of sculptures, but even the most detailed carvings can't convey what these men truly looked like when they were alive. To explore that, Canadian cinematographer and virtual reality designer Daniel Voshart used machine learning — computer algorithms that learn through experience — in a neural network, a computing system processes information through hierarchies of nodes that communicate in a manner similar to neurons in a brain.

Tracking down all the art and reference text for the emperors took approximately two months, and assembling each portrait required about 15 to 16 hours on average, Voshart told Live Science.

To determine the Roman rulers’ likely skin tone and hair color, Voshart studied historical records and looked to the men’s birthplaces and lineages, ultimately making an educated guess.

Crucially, Voshart tells Smithsonian, the project doesn’t claim to offer definitive portrayals of what the emperors actually looked like. “These are all, in the end, … my artistic interpretation where I am forced to make decisions about skin tone where none [are] available,” he says.

Spoiler

Some of the emperors whose faces were reconstructed:

Augustus, 27 BC — 19 AD