WordsEye: software turns words into 3D images – SPIEGEL ONLINE

A pink elephant walking on a rainbow – probably everyone can imagine at this rate a picture. To draw this picture, however, is much more difficult. The new browser application “WordsEye” but can do just that. For simple instructions such as “a pink elephant on a rainbow” creates “WordsEye” reads within seconds a 3D animation.

“Type a picture” of the slogan Online offer: Tap an image. Users simply need to open the browser application and write down what should animate the software – for example, an elephant, a tree, a UFO. “WordsEye” knows The developers say several thousand objects and understand about 20,000 words, which can determine their position, size, alignment, and color. “While professional 3D artists can create anything you can imagine, this experience is most of us denied”, explain the developers on their website. This hurdle they want to overcome. To create art, comics, greeting cards or Memes with “WordsEye”, it does not need any prior knowledge.

Artificial Intelligence recognizes semantics

Still, the platform in the beta phase and is unable to implement any command in an image by far. The software understands only simple sentences and knows almost no verbs. There is still much that the software confused, admits developer Bob Coyne in an interview with “The Creators Project”.

Users must According to Coyne adapt their choice of words and learn within the boundaries of “WordsEye” thinking , Therefore, it is also not simply quotations from novels or songs copied into the text box. An artificial intelligence evaluates the words of semantically and then calculates the 3D objects

Typing the user, for example, in English the phrase. “The small, striped elephant stands one meter in front of the red house”, then “WordsEye” the features “small” and “striped” an elephant. Accordingly, the software will adjust the size and texture of the object “Elephant”.

The results seem partly wooden, partly as surreal art. Some users even ask for specific designs from surrealists like René Magritte or Salvador Dalí. Initial tests and especially successful works show our Photogallery.

to renounce

For the first tests, it is difficult to verbs such as “go” or “sit”. Nor can the objects do not change: A figure therefore always wears the same clothes, a house always has the same number of windows. In online tutorials, the developers explain how users can find the best words for their images.

“WordsEye” as a social network

Most beginners can but learn from other users. Every day, new works in the gallery, the most beautiful of them publish the developers via Tumblr. Anyone can copy the relevant texts and continue working. So you can quickly discover new formulations to which you would rather not come on its own well.

If you want to “WordsEye” test, you can register for free online. To protect the server, the user numbers are still limited. Interested may have to wait a few days until your account will be activated as CEO Gary Zamchick notifies on demand. In our tests, the website has taken a few seconds of computing time for individual work steps.

For years, is the software was just a research project, explained Zamchick. “WordsEye” was opened to users and expands to a social network with comment function and pictures gallery until October 2014th “Our goal now is to the user base to increase,” said Zamchick. “And to bring the skills of WordsEye to natural language.”

How the holodeck in “Star Trek”

Whether “WordsEye” one day as much as can the holodeck from “Star Trek”? In the science fiction series can be produced on any object called holodeck – based on simple descriptions. “The comparison we often hear,” says Zamchick. “Certainly has WordsEye a few magical qualities of the holodeck. But it is graphically limited.”

In the future could “WordsEye” come as a tutorial to use, practice with the children playfully creative writing and English. A first study was carried out with students in the USA (as a PDF). The creative abilities of the software could help to develop computer games and virtual reality worlds.