What Makes Tom Hanks Look Like Tom Hanks
Computer scientists are building realistic models of famous individuals, and making them look and talk like other people.
In the three decades that Tom Hanks has been a leading man in Hollywood, his appearance has changed dramatically. His hair has gone from dark shaggy curls to buzz cuts to salt-and-pepper gray, he’s undergone stark fluctuations in weight for different roles, and he’s transformed from a baby-faced twenty-something into a twinkly-eyed almost 60.
Yet Hanks has always retained an essential Tom Hanksiness. What is it, anyway, that makes people look like themselves?
That’s the question at the heart of a body of research in which computer scientists are using machines to assess huge
