Chinese parents turn to inexpensive AI to predict what their unborn babies will look like

A service that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to predict what an unborn baby’s face will look like has become popular among parents in China.

Advertised on e-commerce platforms, it claims to “predict your baby’s future face based on a four-dimensional ultrasound image” and aroused so much interest that it went viral.

Tens of thousands of customers have paid for the service, which costs from about 10 yuan ($1.4) to 30 yuan on China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao, owned by Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post.

Vendors say they can use artificial intelligence to generate an image of a newborn’s face from one or more ultrasound images.

Ultrasound, also known as an anomaly scan or anatomy scan, is usually performed between 18 and 22 weeks of pregnancy to check the baby’s health. It can also sometimes reveal the baby’s gender.

Some parents also use this examination as an opportunity to check what their child looks like.

In 2020, a mother in East China’s Anhui Province burst into tears after seeing her baby and said, “She has never seen such an ugly baby.”

One of the stores on the Taobao platform reported that for this purpose it uses a generative AI program called Midjourney.

After entering customer-provided ultrasound images and a few text prompts, Midjourney generates four images to choose from.

Some stores charge more to enhance your photos. One photo can take anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes to complete, according to the store.

However, the similarity and expressiveness of faces generated by the AI ​​program are far from reliable.

The results generated are random and change depending on different text messages.

One person wrote on the social networking site Xiaohongshu that her child’s face, created using artificial intelligence, looks like the face of any other child created using artificial intelligence.

Providers cannot guarantee the accuracy of their results and say the faces will show “80 to 90 percent” similarity to ultrasound faces.

Some stores even offer the ability to predict the facial appearance of children up to the age of five.

Critics say the idea is flawed and that an ultrasound scan is not an accurate reflection of what a baby’s face will look like at birth because it is a composite image of multiple materials captured by several cameras.

Additionally, the face may be blurry if the baby was moving when the photo was taken.

Parents often treat this mass as entertainment, or even a talisman, rather than as a serious, scientific process.

In one comment, a customer called the service a “blind box” and said: “Let’s see if my baby looks like an AI image or not. Wish me luck with the birth,” she said.