README.md

metadata

title: PAREIDOLIA
emoji: 👁️
colorFrom: gray
colorTo: indigo
sdk: gradio
sdk_version: 6.16.0
app_file: app.py
pinned: false
license: apache-2.0
short_description: point at anything. find the face that was always there.
models:
  - openbmb/MiniCPM-V-4_5
  - openbmb/VoxCPM2
datasets:
  - AndresCarreon/pareidolia-menagerie
tags:
  - track:wood
  - sponsor:openbmb
  - achievement:offbrand
  - achievement:sharing
  - achievement:fieldnotes
  - achievement:offgrid
  - build-small-hackathon
  - minicpm
  - voxcpm
  - camera
  - multimodal

👁️ PAREIDOLIA

Everything secretly has a face.

Point your camera at any object. A small MiniCPM-V spirit-medium studies the photo the way you study clouds — it finds the two bonnet bolts that were always eyes, the outlet cap that was always a mouth — and the face that was hiding in your fire hydrant opens its eyes, blinks at you, and tells you, in its own voice, exactly what it has been putting up with.

"Forty years on this corner. Not one dog has shown me respect."

Every awakened object joins the Menagerie — one public wall, shared by every visitor, where all of them blink, glance around, and mutter.

▶️ Watch the 75-second demo on YouTube (works muted).

✨ The moment that sells it

You photograph your own coffee mug. Mist crosses the photo while the medium works — "there is something here…" — then it names what it found: "the two painted notes… symmetric…" Two eyes the exact color of the glaze fade onto the ceramic and blink. And then the mug speaks. It has noticed things about you. It has been keeping a list.

No face is invented. The eyes land on features that are really there — that's the whole point, and the whole name.

🧠 How it works — taste from the model, facts from the code

A hard separation of church and state, twice over:

your photo (browser downscales; YOUR ZeroGPU quota pays for your séance)
   │
   ▼  one @spaces.GPU window, ~20s
┌─ THE MEDIUM · MiniCPM-V-4_5 ──────────────────────────────────┐
│  ONE structured generation (critique-then-final JSON):        │
│  privacy gate → object + condition → named VISIBLE features   │
│  ("left bonnet bolt: eye") → persona → the grudge             │
└──────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
               ▼
┌─ THE SURVEYOR · OpenCV, deterministic ────────────────────────┐
│  snaps each named feature to the strongest real anchor nearby │
│  (Hough circles, blobs, corners; pair-coherence rules) —      │
│  the model never places a pixel; the code never invents an eye│
└──────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
               ▼
┌─ THE VOICE · VoxCPM2 ─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  voice DESIGNED from a text description — ten distinct        │
│  characters, zero reference audio                             │
└──────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
               ▼
the LIFE engine (client-side SVG): eyes tinted from the photo's own
palette → first blink → saccades, pupil-follow → the mouth rides the
audio's amplitude. The wall replays all of it forever with ZERO GPU.

The writing is governed, not vibes: a grudge-archetype bank keyed to the object's visible condition (the_veteran/rusted, the_martyr/worn, the_perfectionist/pristine, the_diva/displayed…), and an iron rule that every line must reference something actually in the photo.

Privacy is structural: the same generation gates real human faces and NSFW before anything else runs — the refusal is simply "It is already awake." — and nothing reaches the public wall except server-held, gate-checked records. No user identity is ever stored.

📦 Models (≈ 11B total — well under the 32B cap)

role	model	size	license
sees the face, writes the soul	openbmb/MiniCPM-V-4_5	8.7B	Apache-2.0
speaks the grudge	openbmb/VoxCPM2	2.29B	Apache-2.0

Both models run in-Space. No external APIs, no remote endpoints.

🏆 Badges

• Off-Brand — the entire UI is custom (static web/ served by gr.Server; zero gradio components on screen).
• Off the Grid — all inference in-Space on ZeroGPU.
• Sharing is Caring — every awakening publishes its full wake-trace (the medium's JSON, the surveyor's snap deltas, the chosen voice) to AndresCarreon/pareidolia-menagerie.
• Field Notes — FIELD_NOTES.md — the build log, including the dependency saga and what a vision model does when you ask it to find eyes in a stapler (also written up as a field report).

📋 Submission links

• Demo video: youtu.be/tRAISheTCT8 — 75s, real awakenings + real voices, works muted. (.mp4 mirror)
• Social post: x.com/_Andresio/status/2066372315202441312

▶️ Run it locally

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
PAREIDOLIA_BACKEND=mock python app.py   # mock medium: no GPU, no ML deps needed

The Space runs PAREIDOLIA_BACKEND=zerogpu; mock returns canned awakenings with realistic latency so the whole experience works on a laptop.

🙏 Credits

• Models: OpenBMB MiniCPM-V-4_5 + VoxCPM2 (Apache-2.0).
• Seed-wall photos: CC0 / public-domain images via Openverse & Wikimedia Commons — per-image attribution in seeds/eval/LICENSES.md.
• Type: Cormorant Garamond (SIL OFL).

It was in there all along.