Ten24’s face-scanning gaming project is offering a 3-D face scan to residents for a £40 reward.
The Sapien’s Project, which is located on Orchard Street, Sheffield City Centre is shaping modern day gaming graphics by putting real faces into digital worlds.
Ten24 owner James Busby said: “We want to build a system where we put the player in the game.
“That’s the idea of this project – the idea that you can play as yourself as a 3-D model.”
James first founded the business in 2008, with ambition to create digital characters for gaming companies.
It wasn’t until 2010 when James’ idea of photographed faces came to life, he said: “When we figured out you could use a couple of cameras, take a stereo image and then convert that into a 3-D model it was a massive workflow improvement.
“It meant we could create characters for clients much faster than we ever could before.
“We were then given £25,000 to build a rig of cameras to capture faces to sell to a game called Warthunder…and it worked.
“Since then the phone hasn’t stopped ringing, we were getting work from all over the world.”
Since 2010, Ten24 has worked with almost every big gaming studio, and hopes to sell large quantities of faces from the Sapien’s Project to these clients.
Ten24’s success over the years won the company the Innovate UK Smart Grant (UKRI) award, putting them in a spotlight of scrutiny and questioning over what the company may be doing with the IDs of the public.
@whitneydsa Quick and easy way to earn £40 and also be part of improving AI🌟💐 search ‘The Sapiens Project’ to be part of this! #fyp #ai #gaming #facecard #foruyou ♬ Vogue (Edit) – Madonna
James said: “This idea of Ten24 exploiting public faces was born off a distrust of AI.
“Other image generator companies take peoples work without permission or compensation…it’s practically stealing.
“We thought if we are going to do this, we need to do this in a way that shapes the future of how data is gathered for training AI systems.
“We abide by every single personal data security law that there is in the UK.”
Before participants have their face scanned, they are given time to sign a waiver that outlines the terms and conditions of the project.