Generate avatars from images with Avatar Lab Preview [Demo]

[Roblox]

Hi Creators,

Today, we’re publishing an experimental experience called Avatar Lab Preview. This is an early demo of our in-experience avatar generation technology aimed at testing our product’s capabilities. We’re looking to gather feedback from you before launching these avatar generation APIs.

Our long-term goal is to release three APIs that you’ll be able to incorporate into your experiences. These three APIs will enable the following:

1. Use an image and/or provide a text prompt and generate a 2D preview image
2. Take the above 2D preview image and generate a 3D Roblox avatar
3. Allow your users to pay to publish a personal copy of their avatar to be used across the platform (after passing validation and moderation)

The APIs that we plan to release in the future will also be able to use EditableMesh and EditableImage on the avatar itself, so users can potentially paint, form, and sculpt a completely custom avatar.

We hope these new capabilities will allow you to build experiences where anyone can fully embody the character and style of your experience– creating avatars ranging from humanoids to fantasy creatures. We believe this will allow many more users the ability to delve into avatar creation, and we can’t wait to see what you make.

How to provide us feedback

The Roblox-created experience that we’re sharing today is a step toward releasing these APIs, and it’s still a work in progress. This experience allows you to generate an avatar by selecting inspiration from a limited number of thumbnail images and generating a customized avatar with text prompts. We’ve limited the actions allowed for this initial test, and the avatar cannot be saved or viewed by anyone else in the experience or shared outside of this experience.

While we continue to work on the quality of the outputs, neck seams, hair outputs, and variety of styles, we’d love to get early feedback from you on this experimental experience and any gaps you find that we should address. There’s a Report button on the top right of the 2D generation page.

Our vision for custom avatars

In the future, we envision that these avatars will be made available for purchase, published to your users’ profiles, and taken across Roblox. These custom avatars would also drive the discoverability of your experience — they carry an attribution link back to the experience, allowing anyone on the platform to view and access your experience from a friend’s avatar.

With this technology, we are moving towards a future where you can build avatar creation into your experiences — ultimately allowing anyone to create an avatar in an experience that can be used across Roblox.

Addressing bias in AI

We recognize that AI algorithms and datasets can potentially reflect or amplify unfair biases. Addressing and removing these biases from our models is a key priority for Roblox. To guard against bias in our own models, we leveraged diverse data sets, insights, and feedback to finetune our AI. We also extensively tested for violative content, including developing new tooling to proactively catch and address potential violations.

As always, safety and civility are our top priorities at Roblox. To ensure the best possible rollout, we are limiting this experience to 13+ users for now.

Addressing AI bias is complex and evolving across the tech industry. If you think your avatar generation may reflect an unfair bias, please provide feedback in the experience form that will pop up after your generation. We will aim to address any issues in future iterations of our models and future AI-powered technologies. Your input matters and helps us make Roblox a better place and Roblox avatars more representative.

How we trained our data for this experience

For this avatar generation tech demo, we trained our model on datasets that we compiled and developed and did not train this demo on any data from Roblox creators. For more information on our AI data-sharing program that allows you to set your preferences for how your anonymized creation data is used to train our generative AI models for other technologies, visit our recent DevForum post.

Future of AI-powered avatar creation technology

Our vision is to enable creation for all creators, and we view these AI tools as a way to augment everyone’s creativity. We believe a platform where everyone can express themselves more fully makes for richer, more immersive experiences for everyone.

While we will release these APIs in the future, we’re also making creation easier at every level through AI– most recently, we launched Avatar Auto Setup, which automatically rigs, cages, segments, and skins your 3D models with the click of a button, eliminating hours of manual work.

Thanks for taking the time to check out Avatar Lab Preview. We look forward to seeing what the community comes up with — happy creating!

[WhoseTrade]

What protections are being considered to maintain the demand for creator’s products such as bundles and hair as you guys roll out AI generated avatars that could undermine the demand for these creations?

Is the price mentioned to bring your custom generated avatar going to be competitive while not undercutting marketplace creator’s work?

I’m genuinely curious the insights you guys have considered to maintain demand for the marketplace as you continue to roll out more AI generated content that has the chance to easily flood and cut out the need for marketplace creators

[Disgustedorito (Disgustedorite)]

What happens if the reference image is, say, of an expensive or limited avatar that the user doesn’t want to pay for?

[TheSavionCruz (Cruz)]

I was testing this out yesterday actually, and seen how quite the impact this could be for some users!.

[IDMC48]

Time to go into games and see people with crazy-weird looking avatars

[N_ckD]

I personally don’t like this feature. AI is just not ready for any human stuff in my opinion. It also seems to be making everything cartoony-like which is not always the genre I’m going for.

[TheSavionCruz (Cruz)]

To be fair Ai does have some flaws that come with it because there could be some errors or bugs involving, but i do honestly respect Them for how they are pushing it and how realistic they are trying to make it but at the same time Roblox is indeed changing from bloxy to realistic human-like and many users in the community do Not respect that what so ever.

[TheSavionCruz (Cruz)]

Wonder what some people will attempt to make out of this, i can also see if you type certain characters from places it will attempt to make something that resembles, that said character.

[TheSavionCruz (Cruz)]

Quite Interesting to see, I have also noticed that if you switch to the ai generated Body in the screen where you click to equip your head it will glitch out and be black and white in the rthro.

[TheSavionCruz (Cruz)]

Aswell as i seen from before the time limit of how long you have to wait to till usage of the ai itself has increased from 30 seconds to 300 haha.

[HijackedSystem]

interesting feature, but why there is a realistic version of Shrek’s head

[Real_Daytern (Daytern)]

This ai creation definitly expands the creative limit of avatars, but let’s see how it evolves with all the challenges that come with the creation of an avatar…

I hope though it gets the finger count right and we don’t have too many 8 fingered avatars!

[timetopretend8]

Great question, and this is something we’ve put a lot of thought into. And just to reiterate, this is just a test of this technology and creations generated in this experience cannot be saved or purchased at this time.

However, when we consider allowing avatars and avatar items created in-experience to be purchased in the future, we will ensure that this is rolled out in a way that respects the larger Marketplace community. We’re working out all the details, and our current thinking is that we’ll maintain a price floor that ensures the cost of creating a bundle in-experience will not be able to undercut items in the marketplace. Additionally, the launch plan is to only allow a single personal copy of the avatars saved to the user’s profile, so reselling and trading would not be possible.

At our core, we are a creator-driven platform built around your content. Our goal has always been to make it faster and easier for you to create content– ultimately growing the existing UGC creator ecosystem—not replacing it.

Creators using in-experience creation technology have limited tooling to edit and build their avatars. Creators who use DCC (digital content creation tools like Maya) and Studio have expanded control over their avatar creations. Additionally, we launched AI-powered features like Avatar Auto Setup and Assistant to help automate small tasks and improve your quality of life. Avatar Auto Setup automatically rigs, cages, segments, and skins your 3D models, eliminating hours of manual work.

You will always produce the best content on the platform, and our vision is that AI tools will help support you.

[HijackedSystem]

400 seconds seems a bit much in my opinion. But I think roblox would crash if there was no time limit tho.

[timetopretend8]

Excellent question! We are currently building out the plan to allow for increased creativity and customization, and with this comes many restrictions and moderation approaches to make this a reality – including those to protect the IP of creators on and off Roblox. This question is top of mind and will remain a focus as we build out this plan.

[timetopretend8]

Thanks for testing it out! We have seen this pop up as well, and appreciate you letting us know. We’re working on the overall quality, and wanted to release early to get your feedback, so it is still a work-in-progress as an experimental demo.

Keep the feedback coming, and also, there’s the report button on the creation screen if there’s any feedback you want to leave directly from the experience. Thanks a lot for checking it out.

[xyrafrost]

This is interesting, kinda surprised it’s out already. The wait times and generation limits are really bad but I understand this is just an early demo.

In the future, would it be possible to generate other types of avatars, like simple blocky/classic ones? It always feels like big avatar features like this are more focused on realistic humans when most Roblox players have always had a preference for the classic toy-like avatars.

And not even just blocky, but there’s so many other types of avatars you can have on Roblox that aren’t basic humans, like monsters, robots, animals, etc. Even just more stylized humans that aren’t trying to be hyperrealistic.

[karlos_800 (karlos)]

This is the best thing roblox made.

[CZXPEK (czo)]

please remove this
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