FaceApp cheers up sad paintings at Dutch museum

Let an illustrator loose in a museum with a popular mobile app and all hell breaks loose. Olly Gibbs, a freelance illustrator from London recently visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam armed with his trusty mobile phone and FaceApp, a popular application with technology similar to what you’d find in the lenses on Facebook or Snapchat.

Instead of applying dog ears and a tongue, though, (seriously, can we stop?) FaceApp uses AI to map facial features and turn that frown upside down in photos of those with a sombre look on their faces.

And recently, Gibbs put the app to the test at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home of some of the world’s saddest-looking people (in paintings). The results, as you can see, are pretty incredible:

Went to a museum armed with Face App to brighten up a lot of the sombre looks on the paintings and sculptures. The results… pic.twitter.com/N0zYGAFgKW

— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 11, 2017

And some more Face App museum creations… pic.twitter.com/0mBRgiLgCb

— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 12, 2017

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I hear your calls for more #MuseumFaceApp art! Again all from the brilliant @rijksmuseum… pic.twitter.com/xXHNTu86eW

— Olly Gibbs (@ollyog) May 12, 2017

Who would have thought technology could one day put a smile on faces that died centuries earlier?