The Full Enchilada

Imagine, as a movie director being able to use any past actor with just a click of a mouse. The fact is, the technology is pretty much already here. At least for the visual part, we can scan and digitize actors into their virtual 3D counterparts and reanimate them to do and say what we wish. Unfortunately, audio synthesis has not progressed as fast as 3D digitizing and so for now it is not yet possible to use the voice of Marlon Brando or any other of your favorite actors’ to say anything you wish using their voice. There is ongoing research into this and from a security perspective, the technology could be quite dangerous, imagine not knowing if the other person on the other end of the phone call is really the real owner of that ‘voice’ you’re hearing.

Recently some university technology research has been showcased whereby mouth movements can be recreated and morphed and spliced back into videos, putting words into the president’s mouth. How much longer can we trust what we see of any recorded media? The Japanese are working on creating real life-like humanoid Asimov passing robots, no doubt a lot of the intrigue comes from “Fembots”, and perhaps in this area of research just as with the battle between betacam and VHS, once again the more primal urges and instincts in man will be the driving force of this android human technology.

Through a series of articles, I will be re-assessing the capabilities current technology to create believable realistic virtual 3D worlds and programmable life-like human robots.

See “Age of the Androids” series of articles …
Or
Creating your own Virtual 3D Worlds series …