It is a chance to see Roman emperors such as the “unusually handsome” Augustus or “malodorous” Nero, with his “over-thick” neck, as they may have appeared in life.
They are normally remembered through idealised, monochrome busts, but a Canadian designer has harnessed artificial intelligence to create photorealistic, full-colour portraits of 54 emperors, drawing not only on ancient sculptures but also writers’ descriptions and other evidence.
Daniel Voshart, from Toronto, created the depictions by feeding images of ancient busts into Artbreeder, a computer rogram, and refining the results using Photoshop. His manual alterations included removing damage such as cracks and toning down unrealistic stylised elements such as “giant eyes”.
He drew on writers such as Suetonius to infer details such as the colours of the emperors’