1000 Faces

1000 Faces

by | Dec 6, 2020 | PowerShell

Need 1000 or unique user photos for your lab? There is a great website for just such a thing. https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/image. Let’s break down some code to see how we can pull a few hundred pictures.

The first thing we need to know is how many we want. We are going to get 1000 faces for this example. Next, we need a safe location. Finally, we need an sleep time for the site to regenerate an image. Lets get started.

$StartCount..$FinishCount

the two . in this code allows you to loop through two values. Next we need to pipe this command into a foreach object loop. 

$StartCount..$FinishCount | foreach-object {}

Inside the for each loop we start the real work. We are going to use the Invoke-WebRequest. Our URI is the site “https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/image” We will select where we want to save the file using the -outfile location. We are going to save it in the save location we choose earlier. We will put the name as the number you are currently using. Finally we will add a -disablekeepalive flag to stop the system from keeping the connection alive. We do this out of respect for the site. 

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $URL -OutFile "$SaveFolder\$_.jpg" -DisableKeepAlive

Next we need to do a sleep cycle. We do this because if we do a request after another request, we will get the same image. 7 Seconds seems to be the magic number. We do this with Start-Sleep -Seconds 7. 

Start-Sleep -Seconds 7

That’s it, It’s a simple process. The Invoke-WebRequest will get the needed image and save it to your computer. The site will generate a new picture each time you reach out.

The Scripts

Here is the script below. 

function Get-Faces {
    param (
        [int]$StartCount = 1,
        [int]$FinishCount = 1000,
        [int]$SecondsToSleep = 7,
        [string]$SaveFolder = "C:\Dpb\100000 Faces"
    )
    $URL = 'https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/image'
    $StartCount..$FinishCount | foreach-object {
        Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $URL -OutFile "$SaveFolder\$_.jpg" -DisableKeepAlive
         Start-Sleep -Seconds $SecondsToSleep
    }
}

Have fun with this little guy, just remember to be respectful of the sites you are pulling information from.