Method and apparatus for de-identifying a face in an image in a natural way

An image processing apparatus comprising:

• a first face feature extraction unit that extracts a first face feature from an input image including a first face image;
• a second face feature generation unit that generates a second face feature by combining the extracted first face feature and a virtual face feature;
• a second face image generation unit that generates a second face image on the basis of the generated second face feature;
• and
• an output image generation unit that generates an output image by substantially replacing the first face image in the input image with the generated second face image,
• wherein the first face feature extraction unit comprises a first encoder that generates a first feature vector corresponding to the first face feature on the basis of the first face image,
• the second face feature generation unit comprises a mapping network that generates a second feature vector corresponding to the second face feature by combining the first feature vector and a virtual feature vector corresponding to the virtual face feature, and
• the second face image generation unit comprises a decoder that generates the second face image on the basis of the second feature vector,
• wherein the image processing apparatus further comprising a virtual face feature generation unit that generates the virtual face feature on the basis of an estimation result with respect to an age and a gender of a person corresponding to the first face image,
• wherein the virtual face feature generation unit further comprises a second encoder that generates a virtual feature vector from a virtual face image selected on the basis of the estimation result, and
• wherein the second encoder comprises a pre-trained ArcFace image encoder.