Children draw unique and imaginative characters that require us to think a little differently to recognize the people and things in their pictures. While it can be fairly simple for a parent or teacher to see what a child’s drawing is meant to show, AI struggles with this task because kids’ drawings are often constructed in abstract ways.

Our researchers have developed the first-of-its-kind method for using AI to automatically animate children’s hand-drawn figures of people and humanlike characters (i.e., a character with two arms, two legs, a head, etc.). By uploading drawings to our prototype system, parents and children can watch their drawings become moving characters that dance, skip and jump. And, they can even download a video of their animated drawings to share with friends and family. Parents can also opt in to have their child’s drawing used to continue to teach the AI model.