TokkingHeads: Blowing Life into Images with AI

TokkingHeads, Artbreeder, First Order Motion Model, and other approaches.

Meme-Animation, created by me with “wav2lip” mode of TokkingHeads.

Anima is the Latin word for “soul, breath”. According to Merriam-Webster, this word is etymologically related to Animation: “an animated film seems to have a life of its own”. This is how animation works: an animator creates the world frame by frame, and a frame sequence, rapidly played, makes an illusion of movement in our brain.

In AI Age, such animations, especially facial movements, can be taken over by the machine. There are various AI-driven approaches to animate faces.

StyleGAN interpolation

The first approach is a simple StyleGAN2 interpolation (analog to BigGAN). This method was, back to the BigGAN times, a revolutionary way to crossover opposite or different matters and objects, like, transforming a Yorkshire Terrier to a Space Shuttle:

BigGAN interpolation, screenshot by author.

This setting provided a pretty accurate, even if surreal, result.

AI never says “no”.