One year ago Microsoft Researchers created a hyper releastic AI video animator, VASA-1, but did not release it. Now, Bytedance owner of TikTok, is getting closer to matching the VASA-1 ability to hyper-realistically animate the facial muscles of faces and lip-sync based upon a single photograph. The Bytedance product is called Dreamina.
The lipsync is solid in Dreamina. However, VASA-1 has superior eye tracking and whole face animation.
VASA-1 is able to extrapolate the whole voice from a single audio file recording of the person in the picture. VASA-1 is still superior. VASA-1 has not been released.
This is wild.
Nothing is real anymore.
China’s ByteDance dropped Dreamina (formerly called OmniHuman-1).
This is 100% AI from still image and audio reference.
10 wild examples: pic.twitter.com/DY3BFWs82F
— Min Choi (@minchoi) April 11, 2025
VASA is a framework for generating lifelike talking faces of virtual characters with appealing visual affective skills (VAS), given a single static image and a speech audio clip. The premiere model, VASA-1, is capable of not only producing lip movements that are exquisitely synchronized with the audio, but also capturing a large spectrum of facial nuances and natural head motions that contribute to the perception of authenticity and liveliness. The core innovations include a holistic facial dynamics and head movement generation model that works in a face latent space, and the development of such an expressive and disentangled face latent space using video.
AI will become available that will enable the precise mimicking of humans in realtime video and audio. On a video call, you will not be able to tell what is real and what is generated.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
