Engineers at the University of Washington have developed a Freaky Friday scenario-like software that lets users take the unique gesticular traits and mannerisms of one person and apply them to the face of an entirely different individual (in the vein of one of their exemplar scenarios, it's like taking the facial ticks of former president George W. Bush and applying them to our current PoTUS Barack Obama).

According to the scientists, the animus for the project was a simple question: "What makes Tom Hanks look like Tom Hanks?" To answer that, the researchers blueprinted algorithms that parse the Internet for pictures of the particular person (or celebrity) in question, and then use those photos to fashion 3D-controllable models that mimic their facial tics, mannerisms and anything else that falls under that particular categorical umbrella. From there, the software can then build a three-dimensional reconstruction of its subject at hand, or even synthesize one subject's facial quirks onto another recreated face, i.e., "the ability to drive or puppeteer the captured person B using any other video of a different person A."

"How do you map one person's performance onto someone else's face without losing their identity?" asked Steven Seitz, a professor of of computer science at the U of Washington, as well as one of the co-authors of a paper on the team's findings, which will be presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) on Dec. 16.

"We've shown you can have George Bush's expressions and mouth and movements, but it still looks like George Clooney," he summarized. 

Check out what makes celebrities look like celebrities — or even what makes Tom Hanks look like Tom Hanks — in the video below.

Via: Technology Review