by David C. Young, Nov 29, 2023
NOTE: This is from a set of tests done in November 2023. The products and capabilities of those products are changing rapidly in this field, so only a portion of this article will still be relevant a few years later.
One of the niche products coming out of the Generative AI are programs that take a picture of you, or multiple pictures, and create a new version of you. This might be a cartoon version, photo realistic, in the style of some painter, etc. Some will look a lot like you, and some not at all like you.
The following are some comments on these AI portrait generators. These are based on my own tests and experiences, which frankly didn’t match what online review articles were touting. My tests are completely independent, with no endorsement or profit of any type. Tests were done with the software as it was in late November of 2023.
A number of these list monthly or yearly prices, but the iPhone subscription page only offered a yearly payment after a short free trial. Some let you pay for a certain number of pictures. Some are web based, some had Mac versions, and some only work on smart phones. For my own use, I prefer web based, or Mac software, since I work on a laptop when dabbling with graphics work. A few render almost immediately, most take a while, in the extreme up to 8 hours for fifty pictures.
A few notes about these AI models. You could run the same AI multiple times and should expect to get different results. Some give radically different results, while others give small variations on a theme. You should expect AI models to give some images you like, and some that are pretty bad. Some let you type in a prompt describing what you want, but often the best results are with the premade styles. There is a trade off between the more creative models giving faces that look the least like you but dramatic poses and scenes, and the ones that look most like you just looking like you with a different background. Some follow the style of doing closeups with the top of your head cut off in some of the pictures, but I would prefer to see the whole head then crop manually if I so desire. Some of these apps are changing quickly, having added models or pricing options in the few days from my initial glance to my more detailed test drive.
The following are arranged approximately in the order in which I liked these programs. I liked different programs for different reasons.
autoportrait.ai
https://autoportrait.ai/
One time payment. No subscription. $5 for 100 portraits.
Autoportrait gives you a lot for your money compared to other services.
Upload 10-20 pictures. However, it didn’t reject any of my pictures.
This one had a slightly klunky, and confusing web interface.
It generates some samples, then allows you to put in a text prompt to guide what type of picture you want, such as “@me as anime with katana”. Thus it has the greatest range of potential styles, but letting it choose from its list of built in styles gave a lot nicer pictures.
Most of the styles are drawn versions but a few are photo realistic. One of the realistic ones looked like a cross between me and Jeff Daniels. It threw in two female pictures, Supergirl with a face just slightly like mine is a bit disturbing. There are predefined “packs” that generate 50 of video games, or pro photograph, or “surprise”. I got the best results from the surprise pack that gives a whole range of styles. Sometimes it cuts off the top of your head, which any novice photographer would recognize as a rookie mistake. One that showed my hand in the picture showed eight fingers. Some make me look slightly Asian. Several Batman-like ones don’t seem to have the slightest bit of me in them. You can choose one of the pictures and ask it to refine on it, which kept the pose and added a very wierd hat with snake-like tendrils. The video game pack gave some nice images, but very little variety with many similar to one another. The pro photography pack didn’t give anything interesting, but might have worked better if all of my input photos were from the same year. The pro photography one seems to just try to put you into various poses with various backgrounds. Even after weeding out the ones I didn’t like, I got a pretty good set of usable images.
Recommended for it’s wide selection of styles and reasonable price.
Pixpic from media.io
https://www.media.io/
Pay for 50 or 100 pictures.
Pixpic can do photo realistic pictures.
Upload at least five pictures. It was picky about which photos it found acceptable.
It has separate AIs for male or female pictures.
Styles include ID Photo, profile picture, corporate headshot, yearbook, LinkedIn portrait, casual, joker, vampire, president, hero, high-tech, and empire.
Some additional styles only available for female pictures include superhero, witch, heroine, pink, glamorous, dazzling, outdoor, charming, graduation, and oriental charm.
The AI is probably trained on images of actors with more chiseled features than this old scientist. It came out looking like a cross between me and Karl Urban. Admittedly, that is an improvement. Once you choose a style, it generates a whole set of images that are variations on that style. The hero set came out with every one looking like Ironman. Some of the hero ones look like a cross between me and Martin Milner.
This might be the picture generator to make you look the way your spouse wished you looked.
Remini – smart phone or web
https://remini.ai/
Photo enhancer and AI image generator. The AI image generator is only in the smart phone app.
I had to restart the smart phone app that went into an infinite loop on startup.
Styles include cartoon, dating, mermaid, fairy, corporate, shock, fall, wedding, royal, anime, headshot, old money, yearbook.
The cartoon and anime styles make a cartoon version of your face. The rest keep your face with a bit of touchup, and changes the picture around your face. Admittedly, I can’t pull off the fairy princess one, but it will probably work for someone else.
Recommended if you want a picture that really looks exactly like you.
Prequel
For iOS and Android only
Three day free trial, then $39.99 / year ($5.99 / week), or pay for a number of pictures. If you use the pay for a number of images option, be sure to cancel the subscription.
Has both photo editing and AI effects.
Requires 10-20 photos, but accepted all the ones I gave it.
Effects include Monroe, Bloom, Retro, Pinup, Cartoon, 3D cartoon, Old Money, Denim, Trace, dusty, fall nights, blurry face, flat, analogue, 1989, dark, wes, 1999, lynch, distorted, insomnia, album cover, solo, no sleep club, sunset, black, hygee, cinema (short video), Miami, golden hour, Christmas
There are sub-styles within each of these categories. Some of the sub styles did a good job of looking like a younger version of me, and others didn’t look much like me. Some cut off the top of your head. One looked like a cross between me and Harrison Ford. One looked like a cross between me and Gil Gerard.
This gave a good selection of usable images. The price was reasonable if you chose the pay for 50 pictures option buried in the app.
Prequel did better than most at making the vast majority of the pictures look fairly like me while being creative.
Pica AI
https://www.pica-ai.com/
Web or smart phone.
2 credits / day free, or subscribe $39.99/year or $9.99/month
Pica AI is a face swapper. It automates the old photo shop trick of putting your face on a different picture. You can use one of their stock photos or upload the picture you want your face on.
It removed my glasses if the original picture didn’t have glasses. It kept the hair style from the original picture. It did a good job of changing the angle my face was at to match the original picture.
Overall this worked well if what you want is your face in a photo of your choice. Recommended.
Lensa
Smart phone, or Mac app
Lensa has traditional photo editing tools, non-AI effects, and an AI avatar generator.
Only the smart phone app has AI Avatar effects.
It has online paypal payment, subscription, and pay by the picture. In theory, there is a free trial, but a later screen forced you to pay.
It has separate AIs for male or female pictures.
The AI avatar effects need 10-20 input images.
AI Avatar 2.0 effects are business, retro Christmas, old money, first grade, monochrome, roman empire, cyberpunk, iconic stars, 50s, gingerhead, gothic, fashion, preppy, day of death, dark wonderland, ancient Greece, fantasy fudo, dark elves, flowers, warlock, droids, color art, orc, aged, simulation, masquerade, desert planet, cartoon, armored, light guard, magic school, infected, fire demon, darkness, and blond wizard.
Non AI effects work with a single picture. Non AI effects are dust, prism, golden hour, stickers, neon, scratches, hearts, love, leaks, tv, frost, painted, printed, plastic, noir, lomo, paper, smudge, super8. Many of the non-AI effects looked more like putting something on top of the picture than making a new picture.
A number of the models gave glowing eyes.
The percentage of images I liked was low.
Fotor
https://www.fotor.com/features/ai-portrait-generator/
It has male and female models.
Worked with the first image I gave it. Styles include comic, anime, zombie, sketch, barbie, ken, Disney. You get one free image, then you have to pay a monthly or yearly cost, cancel at any time. The monthly or yearly price seemed pretty high, particularly for the small number of styles available. There was also a pay by image cost of $8.99 for 50 images or $14.99 for 100 images. I paid for 50 images, then the app jumped straight to generating photos without asking me what styles or gender I wanted.
One looked like a cross between me and Michael J. Fox. One looked like Paul Blackthorne (none of me in it). Several looked like older versions of me. One looked like a cross between me and an old Karl Maldin. Some put me in an Army-like uniform (can’t use that, I was Navy). My head on a robot body is kind of interesting. The sketch and mecha styles came out best.
With fotor having such a limited selection of styles, a number of the other apps seem like a better value.
YouCam Perfect
Only for smart phones
1 week free trial, then they charge a yearly subscription. Can pay by the image also.
Has separate models for male and female photos.
Styles include Anime, Royal, fantasy, sci-fi, Eastern, rock star, pop art, viking, cyborg, cartoon, statue. It needs 10-20 selfies on your phone to work.
A pretty small percentage looked even a bit like me. The viking ones looked most like me, probably because of a viking berserker in my blood line. Some of the styles couldn’t give even one image that looked vaguely like me.
PortraitAI
iPhone and Android only
Free 3 day trial, then $20 / year or $5 / month
Tries to make a photo into a painting. Some of the AI effects turned my glasses into eyebrows. It seriously heated up my older iPhone. A number of the effects are common image processing tools from long before Generative AI, but the advantage is that they can work on any picture. Effects include mononoke, lion, wasp, fractal, midnight, binary, kandinski, chimera, roy, lego, dragon, thota, old, young, makeup, attractive, child, and AI portrait. This one will work with a single input picture.
The results weren’t terrible, but there are a lot better apps to choose from.
Picsart
Smart phone only
Picsart has a bunch of ai image tools. For comparison to the others here, we are only looking at the Avatar Generator function. Needs 10-30 photos.
Has separate male and female styles.
Styles include thanksgiving, anime, professional, vampire, cosmic, time travel, apocalypse, superhero, watercolor, pen and ink, doll, artsy, fantasy, astronaut, cyberpunk, photography, cartoon, floral, cinematic, pop art, fashion, impression, bold, ornate.
The function to generate avatars gave a wait animation, which was still running the next morning. However, after restarting the app, the pictures were there.
The good part of Picsart is that it did a fairly good job of making most of the faces look pretty much like me. The vampire style just looks like me in a high collared shirt. Only one of the superhero ones had a cape, the rest being me in regular clothes. The cyberpunk ones are me with neon designs in the background. The time travel ones have you wearing clothing from various time periods. The amine ones are cartoons of a much younger, thinner guy who might be me. One of the cinematic ones has the camera looking up at me and the rest are just me with various backgrounds. The fashion ones are me in black and white. The Impression ones are not quite me in a hat. The ornate ones look least like me, but have hair styles and clothing styles from the 1700s or 1800s. A number of the images had the top of my head cut off.
Overall, Picsart scores pretty low on creativity, so I was hard pressed to find even one of the hundred pictures that I would consider using.
Unidream – Mac app
Unidream can work from a single picture. The templates are tarot, watercolor anime, vivid, comics book, mecha, retro manga, pseudo impasto, tears of legend, machinery of war, impressionism, giant legend, cyberpunk anime, 3d rendering, traveler’s tale, wonder girl, toy brick, Van Gogh, illustration, animal oasis, American comics, nostalgic anime, 90s, island survival, pretty soldier.
This one tries to keep your pose and object you are holding. It doesn’t seem to try to make it look like you. Most of the examples are female images, but worked with a male image. Sometimes it fails to make an image. It accepts some words to describe what you want.
I tried the three free trials, but some over worked the face or didn’t follow the selected style. I tried again, purchasing 10 “cards”. The ten cards let me use only a few of the templates. Trying to use the other templates with my 10 card cards, it went to the screen where the only options were expensive subscriptions or buy 600 cards. It costs extra to download a copy in higher resolution. It costs extra to remove the water mark.
The ability to use your pose is attractive, but their pricing strategy is off putting.
Artguru
https://www.artguru.ai
Styles are cyberpunk, anime, ID photo, Portrait of Art, cartoon, Barbie, Fantasy 3D, Van Gogh, oil painting, ghibli studio
Website seems to be either half made, or maybe a preview for a product called PicaAI. Only a few of the models worked, or perhaps there were three free ones but not yet an option to pay for more.
Not tested, but your mileage may vary
AI mirror – not tested, because it is Android only.
Beauty Plus – not tested. The web site implies it is designed for female portraits only.
This is a fast changing technology. There are parts of creating these models that are as much artistry and touch craft as technology. It shouldn’t be hard to add a filter that discards photos that cut off the top of your head, or have glowing eyes. Styles we would like to see include steampunk, Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, law enforcement, redneck, and goth. In the current technology photos that look a bit like an actor may be accidental, but there is a separate genre of celebrity look alike apps.