I saw this in a subway station in Seoul a few weeks ago and was pretty impressed. There are some other articles out there on this but I just wanted to showcase it here too. In Korea they are running a public service campaign called "집으로 돌아오길 바라는 길" (RUNWAY TO HOME 캠페인) using AI to generate modernized likenesses of young children who went missing (실종 어린이) even 20 years ago, having them walk a modeling catwalk hand in hand with themselves as the children they were when they went missing and the way they would likely look today.
This is Song Yunseon, born in 1990 but went missing in 1992. The little girl there would now be 35 and look maybe something like this.
Runway To Home Campaign examples
I think this is pretty effective at least for raising awareness. It's easy to see a random old missing child poster sometimes on Naver or in your apartment elevator's TV nonstop advertisements news feed. But this really hits home that these are real people and potentially still out there. If we are going to use this generative AI stuff, this is the kind of stuff we should use it for. Some people might think it's weird to have them walk a catwalk like this but I like it. It gets attention and brings them to life in a way your basic age-adjusted still imagery doesn't.
Take a look at some of these others:
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| AI generated matured versions of missing children. Image: News1 |
These kids went missing when they were just 1, 3, and 1. They use AI to animate the few photos they have of the missing kid, then age-advance them using AI learning. If you consider how much training data these services have sucked up from online, especially of shots of people at different ages, it must be pretty good by now at approximating this stuff.
Here's the kind of advertisement I saw in the station. You can tell right away that this will draw eyeballs:
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| Runway Home public display example. Image: YTN YouTube |
[기업] "실종아동 현재 모습 본다"...롯데 대홍기획 AI 복원기술 도입 / YTN | YouTube
Since of course there's no way to know for sure what these kids will look like, you can just have the AI generate multiple versions based on the same initial input of a few photos of the kid. Here's a whole collection of what Song Yunseon might look like today, in various poses, styles, etc.
아동권리보장원-대홍기획이 함께 하는 ‘Runway to Home’ | YouTube
Who knows if this will actually help reunite a missing person with their families. Let's hope so. But even if it doesn't I think this is a neat way to garner recognition and to remind people that these kids could still be out there, disconnected from their real families, or of course something worse. It's easy to forget these kids in the bustle of modern life but for the families, they will never forget and while you might imagine seeing their lost kids grown up like this could be difficult, most were apparently supportive and thankful for the chance to see this and of course for the renewed recognition. I can't imagine what it would be like to have your kid just vanish. I can't imagine how you go on after that.
Other interesting AI tracking tidbits
Of course it's not only just for kids who went missing 20 years ago. You can use this tech for people that go missing today too. Here are a couple ideas I thought were interesting:
"CCTV에서 촬영되는 영상이 정면에서 촬영되는 것도 있지만, 옆면에서 촬영되는 영상이 굉장히 많기 때문에.인공지능 기반으로 개발을 해서 옆면 얼굴을 정면으로 복원을 시켜주고...45도 얼굴 기준으로는 98% 정확성이 나오고요. 완전 90도까지 틀어지는 경우에는 92%까지 정확도가 나오고 있습니다."
According to this, AI systems can generate a correct frontal view of a person with 92% accuracy even when the only input is a fully side profile view of the face. I had no idea it was that accurate.
Another interesting tidbit:
실종자의 인상착의나 나이대 등 특징을 AI가 기억한 뒤 여러 폐쇄회로(CC)TV 화면에서 동시 추적하는 이 기법은 KT에 기술이전돼 전국 경찰청과 지방자치단체가 도입을 검토 중이다.
이 얼굴 보셨나요…실종아동의 멈춘 시간, AI로 다시 흐른다 < 사회경제 < 세정 < 기사본문 - 세무사신문
So AI recognition systems can monitor multiple CCTV feeds automatically in real time, searching for specific traits or characteristics of missing individuals. Not only just based on what they look like or what they were wearing, but even things like walking gait. That's pretty incredible. Sure in some what it's an Orwellian nightmare in the wrong hands, but imagine having your kid or elderly demented grandpa lost in a busy train station and being able to KakaoTalk a pic to the station police that gets fed into an AI tracking system and within 2 minutes it returns a hit: he's in line to board a train to Busan (not the zombie kind). Or Everland. Or just on a busy street.
Seoul Ansimi CCTV monitoring service
There's a multilingual service you can activate on your smartphone in Korea to have the cops monitor you on your walk home on CCTV cameras. A sort of virtual office escort service.
The Seoul Safety app (안심이 앱) now available in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Open the app on your way home at night and it will monitor your GPS and have you visually monitored by CCTV controllers and can be in-touch with cops immediately. New meaning to Big Brother.
More on that: Multilingual service rollout of Seoul Ansimi app for international residents | 서울정책아카이브 Seoul Solution
I presume AI tracking software is used to "keep an eye" on the user to track them even if real cops are monitoring the feed. I guess we don't even necessarily need actual eyeballs anymore if AI can identify potentially dangerous situations (like a hooded figure attacking the user or something).
Final thoughts
We are definitely entering a new world here. It's hard to argue against how useful and effective this could potentially be. Also hard to argue against the downsides if this data is handled inappropriately. I just keep wondering what if they feed these AI generated missing persons updated faces into the CCTV systems and they hit a match. Imagine if AI correctly found a kid that had been missing for 20 years. It would be hard not to justify incorporating that into a massive system. Or imagine if adoptees could somehow use a system like this, providing their own photos and AI somehow identifying likely family members. Is that even possible? I have no clue but I wouldn't be surprised anymore if they come out with something like that in the next few years.
For now just enjoy these neat multimedia type missing children's posters and let's hope they might actually bring a few kids home.
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