All posts tagged: expressions

These AI avatars now come with human-like expressions

These AI avatars now come with human-like expressions

Published by skeptic

One of Synthesia’s Expressive Avatars.  Synthesia Artificial intelligence (AI) video generators and the avatars they create are evolving quickly and UK-based AI video company Synthesia hopes to take the emerging technology to the next stage.  On Wednesday, the company announced its Expressive Avatars, which can depict a range of lifelike human emotions. The latest edition of what the company calls its “digital actors”, the Expressive Avatars feature enhanced facial expressions, more accurate lip sync, and realistically human-like voices — an upgrade from the robotic tone of most text-to-audio AI. Also: Zoom gets its first major overhaul in 10 years, powered by generative AI “This technology brings a level of sophistication and realism to digital avatars that blurs the line between the virtual and the real,” the company said in the announcement.  Synthesia’s text-to-video platform comes with more than 160 stock AI avatars users can choose from, which the company created based on human actors, with their consent and compensation. Teams can collaborate on videos from end to end and create videos in more than 130 languages.  The …

Borderline personality disorder not linked to abnormal neural processing of facial expressions, study finds

Borderline personality disorder not linked to abnormal neural processing of facial expressions, study finds

Published by José

A neuroimaging study of young people with borderline personality disorder show that brain activity of these individuals when processing facial expressions does not differ from that of healthy individuals. The only difference was lower heart rate variability compared to healthy participants. The paper was published in Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation. Borderline personality disorder is a mental health condition characterized by intense emotional instability, impulsive behaviors, and unstable relationships. Individuals with borderline personality disorder experience rapid mood swings, have an intense fear of abandonment, and a distorted sense of self. They may engage in risky behaviors, have difficulty managing anger, and struggle with feelings of emptiness or loneliness. People with this disorder may also experience dissociation, a feeling of detachment from themselves or reality, particularly when they are under stress. One of the hallmark features of borderline personality disorder is the dysregulation of emotions. Human faces are potent emotional stimuli, and researchers frequently use images of faces to study emotion processing. Results from these studies suggest that individuals with borderline personality disorder often struggle …

Culture and language reshape our brain’s interpretation of facial expressions

Culture and language reshape our brain’s interpretation of facial expressions

Published by José

Our ability to interpret emotions on the faces of others may be less innate than previously thought. New research examined to what extent the culture people grew up in and the availability of words that let us categorize a spectrum of emotional ideas and experiences play a role in interpreting emotional faces. They found that for people from certain cultures, certain words alter how brain regions interact with one another when observing emotions on others’ faces, implying that emotions are not universally understood. Body language and the understanding thereof is a crucial part of communication. It is often assumed that humans can innately recognize other’s emotions, but there is growing evidence that the ability to decipher these emotions is not instinctive but shaped by people’s culturally shared understanding of emotions. A team of scientists in the US decided to investigate how cultural upbringing and access to emotion category words, which categorize and facilitate access to a complex set of emotional ideas, experiences, and responses stored in our memory, impact how we perceive others’ emotional facial …

Study finds differential responses to emotive expressions

Study finds differential responses to emotive expressions

Published by José

In a world where computer-generated images and videos are increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality, a recent study in Scientific Reports sheds light on how our brains respond to emotional expressions from faces we believe to be real versus those we think are computer-generated, or “deepfakes.” The study discovered that when people think a smiling face is artificial (like a deepfake), they don’t react to it as strongly or positively as they do to real smiles, but their reactions to angry faces remain the same whether they believe the face is real or fake. Deepfakes are hyper-realistic digital creations that use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high degree of authenticity. This technology can create convincing fake content that appears real, such as videos of public figures saying or doing things they never actually did. The term “deepfake” combines “deep learning” (a subset of AI that uses neural networks to learn from large amounts of data) and “fake,” reflecting the technology’s capacity to create …

Scientists show how emotional expressions influence women’s attraction to male faces

Scientists show how emotional expressions influence women’s attraction to male faces

Published by José

New research demonstrates that women’s preferences for certain male facial features are influenced by the perceived emotions on those faces. The findings, published in Evolutionary Human Sciences, indicate that masculine faces are perceived as more attractive when they display a happy expression, suggesting that positive emotions can offset the negative perceptions linked to masculine facial features. Previous research has identified three key factors that influence facial attractiveness: symmetry, averageness, and sexually dimorphic features (traits that differ between the sexes). Interestingly, sexually dimorphic features, particularly in men, have been a subject of debate. Some theories, like the immunocompetence hypothesis, suggest that masculine traits in men, such as a strong jawline, signal a robust immune system, making them more attractive to women. However, this theory has been contested, with other studies finding feminine male faces more appealing to women. This inconsistency led researchers to delve deeper, considering other factors like cultural and environmental influences, perceptions of dominance, and associations with traits like fidelity. Another intriguing angle explored the idea that emotional expressions might play a role in …

What We Do With Our Faces

What We Do With Our Faces

Published by skeptic

Why do Americans smile so much? Marco Goran Romano November 11, 2023, 10:02 AM ET This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. In 2016, my colleague Olga Khazan saw a cultural difference playing out on the faces of those around her. “Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents,” she wrote. “Whenever I or my friends were having our photos taken, we were told to say ‘cheese’ and smile. But if my parents also happened to be in the photo, they were stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation photos. My parents’ high-school graduation pictures show them frolicking about in bellbottoms with their young classmates, looking absolutely crestfallen.” Were her Russian relatives simply less happy than her American friends? Not necessarily, it turns out: Research suggests that some societies view casual smiling as …