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April 23, 2025
Anamorphoses, those fascinating images that only reveal their true subject when viewed from a specific angle or through a special optical device, have a long history. These mathematically constructed illusions were created as early as the 17th century. However, their magic unfolds only under specific conditions, whereby their meaning is often lost during normal viewing. A new method called LookingGlass aims to link these traditional optical illusions with the possibilities of generative AI.
LookingGlass uses latent, rectified flow models to generate anamorphic images that offer a meaningful interpretation even when viewed directly. This represents a further development of the so-called "Visual Anagrams" and expands the possibilities of image manipulation through the use of latent space models and a wider range of spatial transformations. The result is novel generative illusions that captivate the viewer on multiple levels.
At the heart of the LookingGlass method is the so-called "Laplacian Pyramid Warping," a frequency-dependent image distortion technique. This technique enables the generation of high-quality, ambiguous anamorphoses. By manipulating the different frequency bands of an image, the distortion can be precisely controlled, thus achieving an optimal result.
The possibilities opened up by LookingGlass are diverse. From the art and entertainment industry to applications in advertising and education – the generation of ambiguous images that reveal different information depending on the viewing perspective offers enormous potential. The combination of traditional anamorphosis and modern AI technology could lead to innovative applications in various fields.
The development of LookingGlass underscores the rapid advancements in the field of AI-powered image generation. Companies like Mindverse, a German provider of all-in-one content tools for AI texts, images, and research, play a crucial role in the development and implementation of such innovative technologies. Mindverse acts as an AI partner and develops customized solutions such as chatbots, voicebots, AI search engines, and knowledge systems that harness the potential of AI for businesses and individuals.
LookingGlass is an example of how AI is expanding the boundaries of image manipulation and opening up new creative possibilities. The fusion of traditional techniques with state-of-the-art AI technology promises exciting developments in the future and could fundamentally change the way we perceive and interpret images.
Literaturverzeichnis: Chang, P., Sancho, S., Tang, J., Gross, M., & Azevedo, V. C. (2025). LookingGlass: Generative Anamorphoses via Laplacian Pyramid Warping. arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.08902. Sancho, S. Personal Website. https://sergio-sancho.github.io/ Hugging Face Papers. https://huggingface.co/papers CVPR 2025 Accepted Papers. https://cvpr.thecvf.com/Conferences/2025/AcceptedPapers Ryoo, M. S. ResearchGate Profile. https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Michael-S-Ryoo-12553262 Diffusion Illusions: Hiding Images in Plain Sight. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382238110_Diffusion_Illusions_Hiding_Images_in_Plain_Sight Deep Generative Image Models using a Laplacian Pyramid of Adversarial Networks. http://papers.neurips.cc/paper/5773-deep-generative-image-models-using-a-laplacian-pyramid-of-adversarial-networks.pdf arXiv:2411.07750. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.07750 Chatpaper: LookingGlass: Generative Anamorphoses via Laplacian Pyramid Warping. https://chatpaper.com/chatpaper/fr/paper/129255 A Model Comparison of State-of-the-art Diffusion Models. https://www.aimodels.fyi/papers/arxiv/lookingglass-generative-anamorphoses-via-laplacian-pyramid-warping ```