Dutch photographer reveals modern image of Egyptian King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti

Using artificial intelligence, Dutch photographer Bas Uterwijk released on Friday modern images of the Egyptian King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) and Queen Nefertiti.

The pictures, which Uterwijk posted on his Twitter page, are based on old carvings and engravings that portrayed the two.

The artist said in his post: “I don’t claim to be a scientist. The historical portraits I make are based on artworks mostly made during the period of their subjects. With AI I filter out the sculpting styles of ancient portraiture and guide it to a credible outcome.”

Uterwijk is famous for using a GAN (generative adversarial network) to convert old paintings of public figures and famous people into photographs. He had previously converted one of Fayoum’s historic paintings into a modern photograph.

GANs are a class of machine learning frameworks that are capable of generating realistic-looking photographs of humans, constructing 3D models of objects from images, and much more.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm