Microsoft Pix update for iPhone transforms your photos into works of art

Microsoft has released new features for Microsoft Pixits AI-powered iOS camera app that automatically gives photos stylistic makeovers, making them look like masterpiece paintings, artistic photos, and more.

The features, which were developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s Asia research lab and Skype, are part of a large update to Microsoft Pix – an app which uses a suite of intelligent algorithms developed by Microsoft researchers to take the guesswork out of getting great photos with every tap of the shutter button.

One of the new features, Pix Styles, transforms pictures into styles inspired by popular works of art or adds an effect such as making the picture look like it’s on fire.

Unlike a filter, which uniformly alters the colours of a photo, applying a Pix Style transfers texture, pattern and tones to the photo in the selected style, transforming it into a distinct creation. Pix Styles is launching today with 11 unique artistic styles; more will be added in the coming weeks.

A second feature, Pix Paintings, creates a time-lapse of the picture being painted in the artistic style selected – allowing users to see their masterpiece come to life.

To build the features, the Pix team used an artificial intelligence processing approach called deep neural networks, which can be used to train massive datasets – in this case troves of paintings – to learn the essence of what makes a given style of painting recognisable. This information informs the photo transformation in Pix Styles and the animated redrawing in Pix Paintings.

The Microsoft Pix team plans to feature a selection of freshly styled pictures tagged with #PixStyling on Pix’s Instagram.

For more information, please read the original Official Microsoft Blog post.

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