Dutch photographer Bas Uterwijk has used artificial intelligence software called Artbreeder to recreate what Jesus Christ would look like in real life. This digital recreation employs advanced algorithms to combine and adjust facial features based on various artistic and historical depictions of Jesus.
The tool uses “a neural network trained with photographs and paintings of thousands of human faces,” the photographer explained in X.
The photographer was not simply limited to the image generated by artificial intelligence. Bas Uterwijk included additional details by adjusting the hair and beard to a more period-appropriate style and length, which can be seen in the two initial depictions. This approach specifically considered the ethnic characteristics of the Middle East 2,000 years ago.
“I felt like it lacked historical accuracy. So I changed the hair and beard to a more credible length and style for the time and the region,” the photographer detailed in an X thread.
Professor Giulio Fanti, expert in sindonology and scientist at the Università di Padova, used artificial intelligence and 3D technology to recreate the face and body of Jesus of Nazareth. This project was based on historical data and ethnic patterns. to offer a new vision on the appearance of the religious character.
The process began with a detailed analysis of the Shroud, an object of religious significance believed to have wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.
From this relic, Professor Fanti and his team obtained data on facial and body dimensions. However, Jesus’ hair and skin tone could not be directly determined from said artifact.
“On the Shroud I have counted 370 wounds from the scourge, without taking into consideration the lateral wounds, which the sheet does not account for because it only wrapped the front and back part of the body. We can therefore make the hypothesis of at least 600 blows,” said the researcher.
“On the other hand, the three-dimensional reconstruction has made it possible to reconstruct that at the moment of death the Man of the Shroud collapsed to the right because his right shoulder was so dislocated that he injured his nerves,” he added.
The depictions of Jesus using artificial intelligence imaging and 3D technology are interpretations based on historical data and ethnic patterns.
However, it is important to recognize that these representations cannot be considered definitive or accurate due to limitations in obtaining precise details such as hair and skin tone.
Artificial intelligence models are fed large amounts of image data to learn visual patterns and features.. This can include photos of people, landscapes, objects, etc.
Once trained, the model can generate new images when given a random or conditional input. For example, if given a descriptive text, it can generate an image that matches that description.
A free model that generates images is Copilot, developed by Microsoft and powered with AI from OpenAI.
When logging into Copilot with an account, users must type a prompt such as “generate an image of what Jesus Christ would have looked like in his final years of life.”
Prompts are key in interactions with AI, since the more precise they are, the better the responses the tool will give. It is also important to consider the privacy of the data shared. Sharing personal information such as passwords, location and full names should be avoided as much as possible.
