The futuristic news just keep piling on. Last month, Matthias Nießner of Standford University and several colleagues presented a mind-bending technique for copying facial expressions in real time from one actor to another:

We present a method for the real-time transfer of facial expressions from an actor in a source video to an actor in a target video, thus enabling the ad-hoc control of the facial expressions of the target actor. The novelty of our approach lies in the transfer and photo-realistic re-rendering of facial deformations and detail into the target video in a way that the newly-synthesized expressions are virtually indistinguishable from a real video.

If that sounds like science-fiction to you, you’re not alone. Take a look at this video showing the technique in action: