Lip-syncing Obama: New tools turn audio clips into realistic video | UW Today | iPads, MakerEd and More  in Education | Scoop.it
University of Washington researchers have developed new algorithms that solve a thorny challenge in the field of computer vision: turning audio clips into a realistic, lip-synced video of the person speaking those words.

As detailed in a paper to be presented Aug. 2 at  SIGGRAPH 2017, the team successfully generated highly-realistic video of former president Barack Obama talking about terrorism, fatherhood, job creation and other topics using audio clips of those speeches and existing weekly video addresses that were originally on a different topic.

“These type of results have never been shown before,” said Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, an assistant professor at the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Realistic audio-to-video conversion has practical applications like improving video conferencing for meetings, as well as futuristic ones such as being able to hold a conversation with a historical figure in virtual reality by creating visuals just from audio. This is the kind of breakthrough that will help enable those next steps.”