Researchers at Microsoft released a paper this week about VASA-1, a new AI tool that can generate a convincing video of someone speaking, using just a still image. Microsoft doesn’t have immediate plans to release the new tool to the public, but it’s pretty impressive. Well, it’s impressive if you don’t look too closely at the teeth. Just take a gander at those chompers.
Again, it’s all quite impressive, as you can see in one of the videos Microsoft provided below. But the one area where VASA-1 seems to struggle is rendering teeth. If you focus on the teeth, they can get a cartoonish quality, appearing slightly animated in a way that doesn’t quite fit with the hyper-realistic quality of everything else.
Another example video provided by Microsoft, which appears below, shows similar cartoon-like qualities in the teeth—even though other features appear very realistic, especially when you remember the only source material is a static image and an audio file.
For whatever reason, the teeth in videos showing men were slightly less noticeable, perhaps because the model didn’t show men opening their mouths quite as wide while speaking. But anyone who looks closely can still get the sense something isn’t quite right here.
And that speed is something that can deliver instant videos for a variety of applications, like real-time translation services.
“Our method not only delivers high video quality with realistic facial and head dynamics but also supports the online generation of 512×512 videos at up to 40 FPS with negligible starting latency. It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors,” the new paper reads.
“The benefits—such as enhancing educational equity, improving accessibility for individuals with communication challenges, offering companionship or therapeutic support to those in need, among many others—underscore the importance of our research and other related explorations. We are dedicated to developing AI responsibly, with the goal of advancing human well-being,” the paper reads.
“Given such context, we have no plans to release an online demo, API, product, additional implementation details, or any related offerings until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations.”
That’s probably a good idea, given the number of scams that are possible with this kind of tech. After all, the 2024 presidential election in the U.S. is just seven months away. And the threat of fascism globally isn’t disappearing anytime soon. Humanity really does feel like it’s powerless against AI-generated fakes right now. And large companies like Microsoft should probably do everything in their power to limit the potential harm before virtually everything on the internet becomes fakery.
