Photo-to-Anime is Having its Moment
Everyone wants to be kawaii ✌️
A new wave of AI image and video models has sparked new interest in photo-to-anime: people want custom anime versions of themselves and their loved ones.
Creating a convincing anime version of a real person is harder than it looks!
Anime-Capable Models
Whenever a new AI model is released, there is a rush to create all kinds of anime characters and effect. Models like Google's Nano Banana and Alibaba's Qwen series of models can create images that are indistinguishable from TV anime stills. Anime has become an unofficial benchmark for image-model prompt adherence and accuracy.
Photo-to-Anime Is Harder Than Text-to-Image
Text-to-image generation starts with a blank canvas. The model can choose the pose, lighting, features, and exact style. It only needs to obey the vibes of the prompt.
Image-to-image conversion, on the other hand, requires two things simultaneously:
- Preserve the identity of a real person, including face geometry, hairlines, expressions, and imperfections.
- Transform it into a specific stylized art form.
This tension makes photo-to-anime a particularly difficult task. One wrong step and the result slides into uncanny valley territory.
The ChatGPT "Ghibli Moment" Sparked a Boom
Everything changed the moment those viral "Ghibli selfie" images hit X and Instagram. Suddenly, millions of people were trying to generate cute anime portraits with Studio Ghibli's visual warmth.
But it also highlighted the underlying challenges. Yellowing of the image, overly generic faces, and slow loading times were all common complaints.
Despite the imperfections, this moment proved a huge point: the demand for clean, high-quality photo-to-anime conversion is enormous.
Image Fidelity Requires Balance
There are many different anime styles and levels of detail. There is a spectrum of fidelity:
High Fidelity
- Preserves fine real-world details and textures
- Easy to identify the subject
- Can appear more Western
Medium Fidelity
- Preserves most real-world details, but stylized
- Looks like the person,
- More textured, more detailed
Low Fidelity
- Larger eyes, lighter lines, cel-shading
- Simplified hair and facial features
- More kawaii, but also more generic
People want to look like a stylized version of themselves, not an AI caricature. Real humans have real features: wrinkles, asymmetries, thinning hairlines, under-eye texture, freckles. The ideal model preserves identity while smoothing these features into the anime aesthetic gracefully.
AutoWeeb's Approach: A Fine-Tuned Qwen Model
To solve this, we trained a custom model on top of Alibaba's Qwen-Image-Edit-2509, optimized specifically for photo-to-anime tasks.
We focus on:
- Balancing the level of detail for identity preservation
- Clean, thin line art
- Slice-of-life anime style
Our work was featured by Alibaba's AI Lab, who highlighted the improvements to Qwen's anime rendering capabilities, especially in face fidelity and detail coherence.
Internally, we benchmarked it against several leading models and found significantly improved likeness retention, especially across ethnicities and age groups.
Get Started with AutoWeeb
Ready to anime-fy yourself?
Try the latest version of our photo-to-anime model through AutoWeeb, powered by our custom model.
- Upload a photo
- Choose your style
- Get an accurate, stylized anime portrait in seconds
