MICROSOFT. VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time.
REPORT. VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time
Risks and responsible AI considerations
Our research focuses on generating visual affective skills for virtual AI avatars, aiming for positive applications. It is not intended to create content that is used to mislead or deceive. However, like other related content generation techniques, it could still potentially be misused for impersonating humans. We are opposed to any behavior to create misleading or harmful contents of real persons, and are interested in applying our technique for advancing forgery detection. Currently, the videos generated by this method still contain identifiable artifacts, and the numerical analysis shows that there’s still a gap to achieve the authenticity of real videos.
While acknowledging the possibility of misuse, it’s imperative to recognize the substantial positive potential of our technique. The benefits – such as enhancing educational equity, improving accessibility for individuals with communication challenges, offering companionship or therapeutic support to those in need, among many others – underscore the importance of our research and other related explorations. We are dedicated to developing AI responsibly, with the goal of advancing human well-being.
Given such context, we have no plans to release an online demo, API, product, additional implementation details, or any related offerings until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations.