Are you looking at your phone while talking to your superior in a Teams or Zoom video call? No problem, NVIDIA It takes care of making nobody notice as long as you are smart enough to hide the smartphone from the camera frame.
We talk a lot regarding artificial intelligence and its possibilities, as if they were things of tomorrow, but today we already have an application available that makes use of it and to enjoy it, all you need is a program called NVIDIA Broadcast and a graphics card NVIDIA RTX 2000, 3000 o 4000.
NVIDIA explains that the new Eye Contact effect moves the user’s eyes to simulate eye contact with the camera, which is achieved by estimating and aligning the gaze. Eyes retain their natural color and blink, and there’s even a sleep feature in case you look too far, to smoothly transition between simulated and real eyes.
After introducing himself and testing it at the CES 2023 by the Spanish NVIDIA engineer Gerardo Delgado, we have been able to test it on our own computer equipped with a NVIDIA RTX 3080. And the truth is that the result is incredible, although not perfect and has room for improvement.
Very easy to use: install and work
The first thing we have to do is go to NVIDIA Broadcast and download the app. Once downloaded we will see that we need certain hardware. For example, having an NVIDIA RTX graphics card. If we do not meet the requirements we will not be able to download the program.
Once the program is installed we will see how the interface reviews all our inputs and outputs. That is, we can manage both microphone (great for using the background noise remover)such as speakers and webcam. And we are here for the webcam.
If we click on webcam we will see that the program lets us select the camera we want (great for those who have more than one, for example, streamers). Once done, it gives us a series of effects that we can choose from. The interface has a lot of things to improve, by the way, it shows that it is beta.
If we click on the Eye Contact option, the technology that draws eyes identical to ours will come into play on top of ours so that it always seems that we are looking at the camera, as you can see in the screenshots of the entire report.
Very promising but with major flaws
The technology is taking its first steps and the performance is incredible. For my part, I have tried it with several people today in a video call without saying anything and it took people a while to realize that something was not right.
As with video games that have photorealistic graphics, there is the problem called: uncanny valley. That is to say, the eyes that the NVIDIA application recreates are lifeless, they are cold, as if without a soul. It is true that they seem like adjectives that are irrelevant, but when you see them you realize.
If we know the other person a lot and they get the app, you realize that those eyes are not hers, not because they are not well done, but because our gaze, way of observing, changes a little. There the most observant will realize that there is a trick.
One of the flaws it has is that, as it draws eyes on top of ours, we can put small objects in front of our eyes and the program will not be able to detect it, superimposing our eyeballs on top of our fingers or a pencil. The result is very funny.
The potential of AI in these cases is infinite
With a beta we have challenged people who knew us for years. And that without consuming regarding 40 W in my case with the RTX 3080so we can predict that five years from now we will have Deep Fakes with Tom Cruise’s face for live calls that will be as real as the actor himself.
It is impressive to play with these applications and realize what is to come. If you have an RTX 20, 30 or 40 we invite you to try this technology and count the time it takes your teammates to realize that they are not looking at them all the time in a… disturbing way.
