Google Gemini can present cartoon or lifelike avatars to lip-sync generative chatter

ai and ml

Despite uncertainty about how human mimicry affects people, DeepMind fakes are here

Google has augmented its live dialogue model Gemini 3.8 Live with a feature called “Live Avatar” that’s capable of conjuring animated characters and realistic human simulacra to lip-sync Gemini’s machine-generated speech.

“Conversation is inherently multimodal: we listen, look, speak, and use facial expressions to communicate,” explained Shuo-yiin Chang, research scientist at Google DeepMind, and CJ Zheng, Gemini software engineer, in a blog post. “Live Avatar brings these capabilities to enterprise agents. By processing visual and audio inputs simultaneously, it generates enriching conversations for a more comprehensive experience.”

Five years ago, DeepMind warned about various risks associated with the use…