I tried Microsoft One Drive’s AI restyle feature, and now I know what I would look like as a crochet doll | Tech Radar

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I tried Microsoft One Drive’s AI restyle feature, and now I know what I would look like as a crochet doll

One Drive’s AI Restyle tool is part creative toy, part prompt teacher

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I wouldn't have predicted as a kid that I'd someday employ powerful AI to create a tiny yarn doppelganger with suspiciously soulful button eyes, but Microsoft is encouraging exactly that. The company's new AI Restyle feature within its One Drive platform gives Microsoft 365 Premium subscribers a way to transform ordinary photos with AI like so many others, but with a couple of notable extras.

The feature lets users “reimagine” photos into cartoon movie posters, watercolor artwork, anime, and more than a few sculpture forms. You just open a photo, tap the AI Restyle button, and either pick from a variety of options or write your own. What is interesting is that when you pick one of the presets, it doesn't just start making the image as the Google Photos Remix tool does, it writes out the prompt it intends to use and lets you edit it. That's helpful for customizing, but it's also almost a mini lesson in writing good AI image editing prompts. The option for "Crochet Art" came out as:

"Restyle as a handcrafted crochet toy, using yarn textures, stitched details, and soft fabric surfaces in a studio-lit background. Keep the color tone warm and avoid shiny or plastic-like finishes."

Chat GPT turned me into a surprisingly accurate caricature

I asked Chat GPT for feedback on my photography portfolio — here's what I learned

I quite like the result. It preserved my face surprisingly well, but translated it into stitched loops, soft fabric textures, and the kind of tiny handmade proportions that make you look like you should be sold at an overpriced artisan market

And the prompt was concise but had all the key elements. The result was much better than when writing "turn the person in the photo into a crochet doll," which honestly was a horror movie image. It put a yarn pattern over my skin and clothes, but my hair looked like yarn formed out of my real hair and made the nausea-inducing choice of leaving my human eyes and teeth like I'm being tortured by an evil wizard.

By comparison, the one made using the pre-generated prompt, while still looking recognizably like me, was more of an actual crocheted doll made by someone who liked me and had a lot of free time.

Then I tried superhero mode, which is where things got a little more comic-book deranged in a fun way. This version pushed harder into cinematic cartoon territory. Amusingly, there's no copyright-skirting logo on my chest emblem, but I do appreciate that I'm the kind of hero who will keep his facial hair but wear a mask across my eyes as though that will ensure my identity remains hidden.

Outer Range, on Prime Video. (Image credit: One Drive)

The other notable element of the AI Restyle feature is that the preset options change based on the photo you look at to fit what One Drive thinks will work with the image. So, when I looked at a full photo of my dog, several options appeared that weren't available with the one of only half my body, including a "Forest Scene" and a "Hologram."

Another was "Toy Model," which I went with and got the adorable figurine above. Her fur became plasticky, and the art on her bandanna was simplified, but it still looked like her.

The graffiti version was my personal favorite, mostly because it captured the exact chaotic self-importance my dog brings to every room. It looked like street art commissioned by someone who had been emotionally changed by a chihuahua.

What makes AI Restyle work, at least in this early form, is that it is fun but not overwhelming. And you can always mess with the prompt suggestions if you want. Just be aware that you might give yourself nightmares if you don't make it clear that you don't like to see dolls with human teeth.

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Eric Hal Schwartz is a freelance writer for Tech Radar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. For the last five years, he served as head writer for Voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative AI and large language models. He's since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as Open AI’s Chat GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he's continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives. Eric is based in New York City.

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• I tried Microsoft One Drive’s AI restyle feature, and now I know what I would look like as a crochet doll