A state-of-the-art approach that bridges the gap between high-quality video generation and the latency challenges of real-time interaction.
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Creating dynamic, voice-driven facial animations sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and multimedia technologies. The advent of generative models has significantly advanced the creation of conversational avatar videos, transforming static images into lively representations by animating them in sync with voice input. However, this field faces challenges due to the inherent latency in video generation, which requires substantial computational resources and time to seamlessly convert images and audio into video sequences, often hindering real-time applications.
The demand for real-time interaction presents a significant obstacle. Existing models, such as AD-NeRF [18] or BigVGAN [23], excel in offline processing but are constrained by complex computational processes, making them unsuitable for real-time interactive scenarios. There is a pressing need for an end-to-end real-time dialogue solution capable of animating static portraits and facilitating seamless, responsive interaction with users. Our objective is to reduce the time required for the image and audio-to-video generation process, thereby maintaining responsiveness during interactions while ensuring the quality of the output.
With these challenges and motivation in mind, we introduce a state-of-the-art framework for real-time conversational avatars ("video agents"), that bridges the gap between high-quality video generation and the latency challenges of real-time interaction. By utilizing pre-generated video frames and employing real-time video frame interpolation techniques, our system can animate static portraits quickly in response to new audio inputs. The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) further enhances the avatar's ability to engage in coherent, context-aware dialogues, allowing for personalized and emotionally resonant interactions. This framework significantly reduces processing time while maintaining high-fidelity output, making it ideal for dynamic, responsive applications in entertainment, virtual communication, and AI-driven customer service.
We propose an innovative framework that combines the immediacy of real-time processing with the depth of generative models to animate static portraits.
Two-Phase Processing
We utilize a small set of carefully selected audio samples to generate a series of video frames , encompassing a wide range of lip movements to enhance the expressiveness of the avatar.
Dynamic Frame Matching and Real-Time Video Interpolation: Upon receiving new audio input , we convert this audio into a set of hyperparameters that encapsulate the characteristics of the audio. These hyperparameters are then matched with the pre-generated set of hyperparameters corresponding to the frames .
We then employ real-time video frame interpolation techniques, such as RIFE [23], to increase the frame rate and smooth transitions, restoring the avatar's natural fluidity and improving the quality of interactions by enabling seamless transitions between expressions. For generating an intermediate frame between two consecutive frames and :
where represents the warped frame based on the optical flow from frame to frame . is a weighting factor that controls the contribution of each warped frame to the interpolated output. and are the optical flow fields estimated between and ..
Application of Large Language Models
The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) in facial animation generation substantially enhances user interactions. Enabling avatars to engage in coherent and contextually relevant dialogues, ensuring that each interaction is unique and tailored to the user’s preferences, which significantly enriches the overall user experience. The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) in facial animation generation can significantly enhance user interaction. By employing sentiment analysis, these models can discern users' emotional states, allowing avatars to display corresponding facial expressions—smiling when users are happy and adopting a concerned look when users are down. Besides, LLMs, like Llama [57], ensures consistency in multi-turn dialogues through contextual understanding and persistent memory, facilitating personalized dialogue generation tailored to individual user preferences. Additionally, its training on diverse conversational datasets enables the production of naturalistic dialogues. Through multimodal interaction, avatars can react in real time to users’ gestures and facial expressions, enriching the authenticity of the experience.
We designed an end-to-end framework that generates real-time interactive conversational avatars from static images, leveraging advancements in generative models and LLMs to achieve naturalistic avatar-user dialogues. Our innovative real-time processing pipeline significantly reduces the latency observed in previous conversational avatar models, enabling seamless, high-fidelity interactions. The integration of LLMs for content generation offers a versatile platform for context-aware dialogue, enhancing the potential for meaningful user engagement.
Conclusion We proposed three advanced systems to enhance AI-driven multimedia applications: the diffusion bridge model for text-to-speech synthesis, expressive talking face generation, and real-time video avatar creation. Our diffusion bridge model offers efficient, high-quality speech synthesis with faster inference times, surpassing traditional methods. For expressive talking faces, we introduced a framework that captures natural facial dynamics and ensures accurate lip synchronization, elevating the realism of digital avatars. Additionally, our real-time video avatar system tackles latency challenges by combining pre-generated frames with real-time video interpolation and Large Language Models, enabling seamless, context-aware interactions. These innovations collectively advance the field of immersive, responsive, and lifelike AI-generated content.
