‘This is a game changer’: Runway releases new AI facial expression motion capture feature Act-One
AI video has come incredibly far in the years since the first models debuted in late 2022, increasing in realism, resolution, fidelity, prompt adherence (how well they match the text prompt or description of the video that the user typed) and number.
But one area that remains a limitation to many AI video creators — myself included — is in depicting realistic facial expressions in AI generated characters. Most appear quite limited and difficult to control.
But no longer: today, Runway, the New York City-headquartered AI startup backed by Google and others, announced a new feature “Act-One,” that allows users to record video of themselves or actors from any video camera — even the one on a smartphone — and then transfers the subject’s facial expressions to that of an AI generated character with uncanny accuracy.
The free-to-use tool is gradually rolling out “gradually” to users starting today, according to Runway’s blog post on the feature.
While anyone with a Runway account can access it, it will be limited to those who have enough credits to generate new videos on the company’s Gen-3 Alpha video generation model introduced earlier this year, which supports text-to-video, image-to-video, and video-to-video AI creation pipelines (e.g. the user can type in a scene description, upload an image or a video, or use a combination of these inputs and Gen-3 Alpha will use what its given to guide its generation of a new scene).
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