Microsoft’s research teams always makes some pretty crazy stuff. The problem with Microsoft is that they absolutely suck at translating their lab work into consumer products. Their labs publications are an amazing archive of shit that MS couldn’t get out the door properly or on time. Example - multitouch gesture UIs.
As interesting as this is, I’ll bet MS just ends up using some tech that Open AI launches before MS’s bureaucratic product team can get their shit together.
Freddie, this is your mom. Look all I want for my birthday is for you to please start using teams new. It's so much better than teams classic. I alread... Microsoft already installed it for you. Okay honey? And could you also start using a microsoft.com account so you can get financially hooked like all the Gmail users? It's pretty smart. Don't you want to be smart like Jonny? Tata!
Since it’s trained on celebrities, can it do ugly people or would it try to make them prettier in animation?
The teeth change sizes, which is kinda weird, but probably fixable.
It’s not too hard to notice for an up close face shot, but if it was farther away it might be hard - the intonation and facial expressions are spot on. They should use this to re-do all the digital faces in Star Wars.
Yes I hate what AI is becoming capable of. Last year everyone was laughing at the shitty fingers, but were quickly moving past that. I'm concerned that in the near future it will be hard to tell truth from fiction.
Combine this with an LLM with speech-to-text input and we could create a talking paintings like in harry potter movies. Heck, hang it on a door and hook it with smart lock to recreate the dorm doors in harry potter and see if people can trick it to open the door.
I was actually discussing this very idea with my brother, who went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, Orrrlandooooo recently and while he enjoyed himself, said it felt like not much is new in theme parks nowadays. Adding in AI driven pictures you could actually talk to might spice it up.
No, it isn't. In that clip they are taking two different sound clips as they are switching faces. It's not changing the 'voice' of saying some phrase on the fly. It's two separate pre-recorded clips.
Literally from the article:
It does not clone or simulate voices (like other Microsoft research) but relies on an existing audio input that could be specially recorded or spoken for a particular purpose.
The "why would they make this" people don't understand how important this type of research is. It's important to show what's possible so that we can be ready for it. There are many bad actors already pursuing similar tools if they don't have them already. The worst case is being blindsided by something not seen before.
I hope they also figure a way to find the bad actors who might use their tools for harmful purposes. You can't just create something for "research" purposes like this and not find a way to stop bad actors using these for harmful purposes.
I mean, I know it's scary, but I'll admit it is impressive, even when I watched it with jaded "every day is another AI breakthrough" exhaustion.
The subtle face movements, eyebrow expression, everything seems to correctly infer how the face would articulate those specific words. When you think of how many decades something like this would be in the uncanny valley even with a team of trained people hand -tweaking the image and video, and this is doing it better in nearly every way, automatically, with just an image? Insane.
It's pretty wild that this is the tech being produced by the trillion dollar company who has already been granted a patent on creating digital resurrections of dead people from the data they left behind.
So we now already have LLMs that could take what you said and say new things that seem like what you would have said, take a voice sample of you and create new voice synthesis of that text where it sounds a lot like you were actually saying it, and can take a photo of you and make a video where you legit look like you are saying that voice sample with facial expressions and all.
And this could be done for anyone who has a social media profile with a few dozen text posts, a profile photo, and a 15 second sample of their voice.
I really don't get how every single person isn't just having a daily existential crisis questioning the nature of their present reality given what's coming.
Do people just think the current trends aren't going to continue, or just don't think about the notion that what happens in the future could in fact have been their own nonlocal past?
It reminds me of a millennia old saying by a group that were claiming we were copies in the images of original humans: "you do not know how to examine the present moment."
Edit - bonus saying on the topic: "When you see your likeness, you are happy. But when you see your images that came into being before you and that neither die nor become visible, how much you will have to bear!"
A long time ago, someone from a not free country wrote a white paper on why we should care about privacy, because written words can be edited to level false accusations (charges) with false evidence. This chills me to the bone.
I'd be less-concerned about the impact on not-free countries than free countries. Dictator Bob doesn't need evidence to have the justice system get rid of you, because he controls the justice system.