The Potential of the Talking-head Video Feature

Artificial intelligence has made remarkable progress in recent years. One fascinating use of AI and machine learning is the use of talking heads. There was a time when children found the Talking Cat app to be enthralling. This app replicates the speech of a person in the animated voice of a cartoon. This was perhaps the first time talking heads made their way into the human world of technology.

The Talking Head video features AI and machine learning algorithms to use inanimate human faces and make them talk as though a real human was talking. There was a trend where pictures of deceased ancestors of people were “given a voice.” This is a good example to explain how an inanimate human face is made to talk. Although that feature involved the movement of the mouth quite prominently, leaving the rest of the face static, the Talking Head video feature makes it look like the video of the person has been recorded.

This feature is rooted in deep learning and deep technology. Deep learning involves smart systems analyzing big datasets. Smart systems help in making accurate predictions and intelligent decisions. Neural networks, a subset of smart systems, are used to create talking-head algorithms. They are fed with audio recordings of human speech and video footage of a person speaking. The algorithm that analyzes this data creates a realistic human face and makes it seem like they are speaking in real-time.

These algorithms can vary in complexity, from lip-syncing based on the language and audio to creating a talking head that has natural facial movements and expressions. The degree to which the machine learning models are sophisticated depends on how well they have learned from the extensive dataset of human speech and facial expressions.

Talking heads have immense potential in every industry that exists. From teaching to the judiciary to virtual assistants in corporations and businesses to broadcast and digital media, The argument that AI would gradually take over the human labor narrative is not entirely true here. Talking heads would make work simpler for humans.

Artflow.ai is a one-stop site for creating stories or making visual storyboards. With AI and machine learning, creating images that look like a real person is at a person’s fingertips. For instance, to create a human presenter, all one needs to do is create a character, the scene, and the settings, give it a voice, and leave the rest to the algorithm. One can make Albert Einstein present a YouTube video on Physics, or Amitabh Bachchan speak about ICICI Lombard’s pension plans.

With Artflow.ai’s video studio, you can make Talking heads that can be used for multiple purposes. Apart from being video presenters, they can be used to customize greetings. A good way to design a greeting would be to create yourself the way they want to see you. You can make a caricature of yourself, dress yourself up as one of their favorite characters, give them your voice and you are good to go!

It would be great to see Idea-to-video storytelling become a trend. It would be a dream come true for many creators to give life to their ideas. For instance, for someone who would want to review a movie, it would be interesting to see how they use an anonymous character from the movie and portray him as the reviewer of the movie the way he saw it unfold. That would be an innovative way to review movies.

Marketing campaigns involving communication with customers, reviewing products, making announcements, making quarterly and yearly reviews, etc, can also be jazzed, using talking heads. Rudimentary marketing campaigns have proven to be unsuccessful in gaining traction from customers, especially millennials and Gen Z’s. They require a different kind of selling, that matches their ‘vibes’. And it has also been proven that people retain more pictorial information better, than written textual information. Hence, making talking heads with Artflow.ai’s Video Studio. Give the speaker a professional avatar, a corporate set-up with good lighting, and a voiceover and you have your customer hooked to your campaign.

Creating one-off educational content has just gotten easier with talking heads. Make talking heads of teachers of your subjects, like Einstein, Heisenberg, Shakespeare, Socrates, and more, and synthesize a voice that you think they could have and use your script. Students will thank you as they learn from the person who developed quantum physics, drama, or philosophy.

Conclusion:

Talking heads or any kind of AI-driven technology, everything boils down to how it is used. As long as it is used ethically and to help people, it is beneficial to society. With more than half the population in the world today being 18-30-year-olds, talking heads would be a good Call to Action for anything and everything you want them to know or want them to do.