Animate Anyone 2: High-Fidelity Character Image Animation

I think we have already crossed that threshold. There are videos today that you'd have a hard time telling if they are AI generated. Not always, but sometimes.

It's been decades since we haven't been able to blindly trust image and videos in court, image and video manipulation are almost as old as photography and cinema.

And paper documents are still being used on court today despite being trivially counterfeit.

Why so? Because court never trust documents blindly, the defendant can always object that it is fake and try and question their origin. If the concerns are deemed legitimate by the court, the document is going to be rejected (and an investigation will occur and the producer of the fake document will be charged heavily).

What's the digital signature equivalent of yellow ink for printers?

This also vastly overestimates the intelligence of the average juror.

This sounds insulting but it is intended to be a frank statement.

In 4 years of working cases I would estimate 1 in 6 jurors are above the 85-115 IQ range of average intelligence, and maybe half are at or below the 100 line.

Add in that anyone over the age of 55 is on average far more susceptible to deepfake technology simply because they don't have the life experience and perceptual skills needed to discern the tells in the video, and you have a recipe for disaster.

If you are in court and your opponent might use fabricated video evidence against you, you better hope that your jury is younger or that your lawyers and judges have the expertise needed to expose any deepfake technologies like this for what they are, or you might be cooked.

It's better than Viggle, but Alibaba doesn't release their models like Tencent does.

Waiting for the Tencent version of this. It feels like Tencent releases a new model or two every single week. If they do release an equivalent, everyone will be able to clone Viggle's entire product offering.

Models are becoming commodity faster than ever these days. We had five foundation video models come out last week. I don't know how Runway ML, with their $300M of fundraising, will be able to stay ahead or raise again. They don't have any special magic, and there's nothing spectacular about their product.

I wouldn't want to be a foundation model company these days. China and any third string company release weights openly to gain network effects and salt the earth for foundation model value accretion. Product and brand awareness are all that matters.

Edit: if anyone from Alibaba or Ant Group is reading, can you release your code and weights? Pretty please?

> Tech has come a long way since Monty-Python style JibJab from 2004.

No doubt! I'm surprised people even remember JibJab.

Light doesn't match up at all (look at the Ronaldo example) and the animation is far from perfect. Go through the one with the joker frame-by-frame, and you can see his arms moving through his body and stuff like that.

Where I work in VFX (RSP) we have an ML department and a lot of what they do is about replacing things in footage (face replacement onto double-actors, de-ageing and so on). What they achieve (that brings significant value) seems fairly adjacent to the tech in the article. Our ML crew have the benefit of a strong compositing department (and other support) that can help integrate the results nicely and smooth over any rough edges. The ML team were nominated for a VES award for their work on Furiosa recently!

If this has anything close to usable rigging data (from what I briefly read, it doesn't seem to), this would be a cheap pipeline for generating animations for real time applications out of video references.

As it is, it seems like it might help for video editing and VFX. Being able to isolate out a human being lets you do all sorts of editing with less issues that can then be composited over later for a final shot.

100% of the capability could be absorbed by YouTubers looking to improve engagement (read: profit) with more interesting visuals. Since they have a bottomless need for that, this would get widely used within days of a commercial release.

Since we live in a social media age, anything that looks "really cool" has basically immediate commercial applications. Even that phrase should set alarm bells off.

Even though the examples have a clear green-screen effect, I would think some of the tricks/filters they used in old video games to make them look "realistic/cinematic" could work here, then advertisers would be able to plug in a picture of a model wearing their latest outfit to a stock video for social media and digital ads.

Deepfakes and porn.

Memes, people will use it for the memes. I saw the NBA footage and yes, i want a gif of me posterizing Ben Simmons.

Personalized advertising: you using a new product and visually enjoying it. Blows my mind people do not see this application.

Catfishing

Convincing older people that their children/relatives are in jail/hospital/kidnapped and need money

Disinformation/chaos by faking important speeches by politicians

Fake celebrity endorsements of products and causes

Rewriting historical events with "newly uncovered" footage

Other creative ways of ripping people off and lying

Alibaba and Ant Group don't release their code and weights, but Tencent sure does. I bet Tencent has one of these waiting in the wings.

why?