Systems and methods directed to controlling the similarity between stylized portraits and an original photo are described. In examples, an input image is received and encoded using a variational autoencoder to generate a latent vector. The latent vector may be blended with latent vectors that best represent a face in the original user portrait image. The resulting blended latent vector may be provided to a generative adversarial network (GAN) generator to generate a controlled stylized image. In examples, one or more layers of the stylized GAN generator may be swapped with one or more layers of the original GAN generator. Accordingly, a user can interactively determine how much stylization vs. personalization should be included in a resulting stylized portrait.