Software to change your gender instantly!

Now, you could change your gender on the computer instantly! Scientists have developed a video software that would take a live video feed of the person talking and make them look and sound like somebody else by changing the sex. To complete the effect, a person’s voice can be manipulated to match their new face.

Scientists behind the creation?

• Barry John Theobald – Computer scientist at the University of East Anglia in the UK
• Iain Matthews – formerly at Carnegie Mellon University and now at Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand

Experiments and tests show how a person’s gender affects the body language of others. The scientists were approached by psychologists who were searching for a way to switch the visual gender of people.

The process?

In order to create this software:

• Footage of different facial expressions (frown, smile, surprise) were manually labeled with positions of key facial features, such as the eyes, nose and corners of the lips.
• The footage was then used to train and polish the software so that it could recognize individuals and expressions featured in the set.
• Once the software gets trained on a person, it would closely track every move of their face in video footage.
• The movements can then be transferred onto the face of another “known” person by calculating how the recipient’s features need to change to take on each new expression.

How fast is it?

It takes just 150 milliseconds… which is fast enough to allow a conversation over video link to continue in real time!

Traditionally, changing one’s gender would take on hours of makeup and art. This is something that even Hollywood would be interested in.

Watch the video

(Source: NewScientist)