StylusAI: Stylistic Adaptation for Robust German Handwritten Text Generation

In this study, we introduce StylusAI, a novel architecture leveraging diffusion models in the domain of handwriting style generation. StylusAI is specifically designed to adapt and integrate the stylistic nuances of one language's handwriting into another, particularly focusing on blending English handwriting styles into the context of the German writing system. This approach enables the generation of German text in English handwriting styles and German handwriting styles into English, enriching machine-generated handwriting diversity while ensuring that the generated text remains legible across both languages. To support the development and evaluation of StylusAI, we present the \lq{Deutscher Handschriften-Datensatz}\rq~(DHSD), a comprehensive dataset encompassing 37 distinct handwriting styles within the German language. This dataset provides a fundamental resource for training and benchmarking in the realm of handwritten text generation. Our results demonstrate that StylusAI not only introduces a new method for style adaptation in handwritten text generation but also surpasses existing models in generating handwriting samples that improve both text quality and stylistic fidelity, evidenced by its performance on the IAM database and our newly proposed DHSD. Thus, StylusAI represents a significant advancement in the field of handwriting style generation, offering promising avenues for future research and applications in cross-linguistic style adaptation for languages with similar scripts.
Comment: Accepted in ICDAR 2024