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Reddituser8018 t1_ir2e9qq wrote

I wish they would do this with a recently deceased person who we have photos of and see how accurate it is based just off their skull.

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Laserbarrage t1_ir2qg4c wrote

Was going to say the same thing. I think there’s a reason they don’t tho. If the technology was proficiently accurate there’s no way they wouldn’t want to show off how accurate it is by using an example they could prove in modern time.

I have a suspicion it’s extremely not accurate.

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dexable t1_ir35fof wrote

There is an exhibit called Probably Chelsea at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It depicts several different sculptures based off the same DNA of a person. There is a lot of room for interpretation of things like DNA it seems.

https://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/probably-chelsea

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Renjuro t1_ir387nc wrote

Very interesting. I’d say you have more to work with if you have the person’s skull though.

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dexable t1_ir5jsv4 wrote

I believe the more information you have the more accurate you can probably get. I realize my response could read as a skeptical one. I just find this stuff very interesting and my personal thoughts on this are kind of a side tangent so I didn't include them in that post. I did in another response in this thread though if you are interested.

In the case of Chelsea there was no skull because well, she's still alive.

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LeagueOfLegendsAcc t1_ir52tci wrote

I don't think they do sculptures off of the DNA when they make these renderings. I'm pretty sure I watched a doc one time and it explained that they actually re build the muscular features based off the skeleton and then add skin and other features on top. Not sure about that Chelsea exhibit but for the ones they did during the doc that's how it was done and it seems like a better method than trying to reconstruct based off of DNA alone.

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dexable t1_ir5hzlb wrote

I think the more information you have the more accurate you can get. In the case of Chelsea there only was DNA available. Personally I find this stuff to just be very interesting. While some people are skeptical I just find this to be an intersection of art and science. In the Probably Chelsea exhibit they explain that the ones picked to show the media were of the higher percentages. However since Chelsea was open to it there was more they could depict based of her DNA. It's a pretty powerful exhibit to see because some of the possibilities look nothing like Chelsea. A person with that face would be identified as a completely different race as Chelsea. To me it empathized how much the concept of race is really a social response to the expression of a person's DNA. The idea that we could look like basically anybody else is really powerful.

It's a side tangent but if you are In San Francisco I recommend checking out the Exploratorium. It's a really fun and thought provoking science museum.

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jalamole t1_ir49dnm wrote

This was really interesting. Thank you for posting

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fuzzygondola t1_ir6jbbz wrote

Can we really not accurately detect "obvious features" like skin tone of a person based on the DNA? It's baffling to me. Those 30 predicted faces seem to have features randomly from all over the world.

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dexable t1_ir6rdhn wrote

This does kind of get to the point of the exhibit. The researcher gave the press of the higher percentages to the press to give a more "potentially accurate" model. However most of the sculptures were created to showcase all the possibilities. Meaning there was a small chance that Chelsea could have looked like some of those but it was still there.

Skin tone is an interesting one, we would think it is simple but it is not. To use myself as an example my skin tone shade is closer to my mother's: light than my father's: medium-dark. However the undertone of my skin tone matches my father's golden undertones versus my mother's pink undertones. Which means the more of a tan I have the more I look like my dad to people. I also have my mother's eye shape but my father's eye color. My mother's hair color but my father's hair texture pattern.

I could go on but the point is that genes can really express themselves in a lot of varying ways.

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dr_king_papa t1_itfffu1 wrote

Hmm, I feel something is off here. I saw this exhibit and maybe I didn't read all the details, but from what I remember, it was made by an artist, not a scientist. From the presentation, it seemed to suggest that the path from DNA to appearance has quite a bit of variance. If it is really so random, why do identical twins not display the same sort of variance in appearance? Yes, of course, any outcome is possible, but if it's astronomically unlikely, what's the point of highlighting it? Maybe I'm missing something?

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dexable t1_itgm0ph wrote

Science requires one to cast aside ones prejudices and have an open mind to come to new understanding. Identical twins have more than just DNA in common. Look up some studies on identical twins if you are interested.

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dr_king_papa t1_ithf50h wrote

Good science, and indeed rational thought, involves a prior belief (what one might call a prejudice), which is updated to form a posterior in the face of new evidence. The stronger the prior, the stronger the evidence needs to be to overcome that prior. I have not seen any new evidence, but I am open to integrating it if it is presented.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence

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dexable t1_ithgrqt wrote

Strong words from someone who clearly didn't click on the original link and watch a 5 minute video.

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keenox90 t1_ir9704l wrote

If that's true, it means we don't seem to know anything about how DNA influences looks. Those portraits look as random as they can be.

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GronakHD t1_ir2v1lq wrote

100%. It will be showing how they could have looked based on the skull

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jojohead24 t1_ir3o3d4 wrote

They use this to try and assist in identifying Jane & John Does. They even include them wearing any clothing found along with the body. It’s just really expensive. I know a podcast I listen to, Crime Junkie, did a fundraiser to help pay for some of these to help. They actually were able to identify like 3 which I think is a big deal. DNA ancestry sites are also great in finding families and identifying old cold case victims.

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Dizzy_Duck_811 t1_ir4fi2p wrote

There was a 50 years cold case that was solved recently like this. A young girl was killed by someone the police has questioned a few times, but they’ve had no evidence. They had DNA saved from the crime, and they found a familial match. That is how they’ve solved the case. Her family was long gone by the time it was solved. They never got to know who killed her.

And this is not the only case like this!

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DarkstarInfinity2020 t1_ir3hwam wrote

Judging by unknown but later identified skeletons who were reconstructed (and their pictures in life,) the veracity of the reconstruction depends upon the reconstructor.

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Life_has_0_meaning t1_ir39m8y wrote

Agreed. But maybe they just don’t want us digging up granny so we can see what she’d look like in a colour photo.

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AgentCC t1_ir42csc wrote

I’m no expert but, based off skeletal remains, they can’t know how fat the person was nor precisely determine the cartilaginous parts of the head like the ears and nose.

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hogger85 t1_ir4f6sk wrote

I believ they can look at some factors of the the attachment points and think can see stresses from overweight

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Tiny_Rat t1_ir4j65s wrote

Also, if other parts of the skeleton are available, they can sometimes see gout or other illnesses associated with obesity.

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AtsignAmpersat t1_ir58sb6 wrote

Someone has definitely tried it. Like wouldn’t that be the first or second thing you would test? And since we haven’t seen that, we can conclude that it is not accurate and this has basically artwork.

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Lifekraft t1_ir4msii wrote

Thats artist vision usually, as they call it. At least it's what they did the last 20 years. And it was still the same melody last year. Literraly an ongoing "joke" for more time than that probably.

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Br12286 t1_ir525zo wrote

I always think that too when I see these. How do they know if they had full lips or thin ones? How do they know what the tip of their nose looked like when it’s all cartilage? I’m sure they get close but there are just some features they can’t ever get right because the reference for it doesn’t exist and is left to interpretation.

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PurpleAntifreeze t1_ir2zlx6 wrote

These are done for recently deceased people, specifically those whose remains are skeletal or other wise decayed beyond identification.

The reproductions are accurate enough to assist in the identification of murder victims. It’s not like this is new information, either

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Ok-Farmer-2695 t1_ir3izen wrote

Source?

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Amythyst34 t1_ir3layr wrote

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/written-bone/forensic-anthropology/forensic-facial-reconstruction

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Ok-Farmer-2695 t1_ir3rcc9 wrote

Thanks for the link. It was interesting, and it says the reconstructions are just approximations.

> Markers indicate the depths of tissue to be added to the skull (a cast in this case). Studies over the past century of males and females of different ancestral groups determine the measures of these depths.

> The finished product only approximates actual appearance because the cranium does not reflect soft-tissue details (eye, hair, and skin color; facial hair; the shape of the lips; or how much fat tissue covers the bone). Yet a facial reconstruction can put a name on an unidentified body in a modern forensic case.

How they go from approximation to identifying bodies goes unexplained, but I’d guess they use other circumstantial data, like “Hey a Caucasian male hiker in his 20s went missing in this area 50 years ago and this fits the bill.”

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Amythyst34 t1_ir3t0yr wrote

I've seen some documentaries that show super close reconstructions, but I'm sure those are the exception and not the rule. "Not an exact science," a the saying goes. But even if it brings closure to only a few families, I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Plus, it will only get better over time as those who do it learn and utilize technology.

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Tiny_Rat t1_ir4jfb7 wrote

The approximation is often close enough that friends or family can recognize the deceased. It might not look exactly like them, but can be close enough to significantly narrow down the search for their identity.

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Renjuro t1_ir37zs6 wrote

What are you talking about? Forensic scientists rebuild faces from skulls of the recently deceased all the time. It’s used for body identification.

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[deleted] t1_ir3kk7e wrote

[deleted]

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adinfinitum225 t1_ir3nt58 wrote

They can't give anything pictures if they don't know who the body belongs to

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JeffieSandBags t1_ir3sxr1 wrote

How can you know who it is if you never got pictures of em?!?

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[deleted] t1_ir4byto wrote

[deleted]

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Tiny_Rat t1_ir4jaom wrote

No, these reconstructions are done by forensic artists, not AI and they're most often used in canvassing for information, basically hoping someone sees the reconstruction and recognizes them.

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Dizzy_Duck_811 t1_ir4fs1t wrote

The forensic science is doing experiments on real dead bodies. I can’t remember what they call it, but the people who donate their bodies to science, are worked on by different departments. They watch in real time how long it takes for a body to decompose under different circumstances, and they go from there with their discoveries. They can come quite close to what a person might look. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

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professionalser t1_ir2qhs5 wrote

They did something like this with modern animal skeletons. They recreated them like they would a dinosaur. Some of the results were pretty comical.

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Tiny_Rat t1_ir4jjg4 wrote

They recreated them lime they would have recreated a dinosaur 50 years or so, you mean. Modern archeological reconstruction considers much more than just the skeleton

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KombuchaBot t1_ir4hky9 wrote

Here is a photo of April Dawn Lacey who was identified after they had done reconstruction, alongside a pencil sketch based on their conclusions

It's pretty good, I think; the eyes aren't quite right (it looks as if hers are just a fraction more deepset), and her eyebrows arched a bit more than they accounted for, but the nose, mouth and shape of the face generally are on point

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ImperatorRomanum t1_ir31wno wrote

According to my Native American history professor, when James Chatters did the initial facial reconstruction of the Kennwick Man, he admitted he had been watching a lot of TNG which is why the reconstruction looked suspiciously like Patrick Stewart. Take these with a shaker of salt.

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stratamaniac t1_ir3sow3 wrote

Police have done it with human remains before as part of criminal investigation but I don’t know if it generated any leads.

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Valerian_ t1_ir3ct9r wrote

That's most probably what they use to train the AI automatically: hundreds of scans of skulls and photos of the person it was before, and the AI does trial and error to correct its algorithm until the reconstruction matches the photos.

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Tiny_Rat t1_ir4jr0u wrote

These reconstructions aren't made by AI. They're mostly made by people trained in forensic reconstruction, either as physical or digital 3D models (or both, as in this specific project)

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admuh t1_ir4o3pl wrote

This is basically how machine learning works. They show the computer a scan of a skull and an image of the person's face and with enough samples it can produce an approximation of one without the other

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CapAnsonTemp t1_irgvrd7 wrote

They've done lots of that with crime scenes and victim IDs. And the results are surprisingly accurate. These ARE what these people looked like.

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JakobXP t1_it5smng wrote

That's some dark science stuff right there. I'm in!

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Chocolatefix t1_ir3z8g3 wrote

I've ALWAYS wanted to see that done. Some of the facial recreations seem way too ugly to be real.

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