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The virtual reality of EmotionAI
13.10.09
The virtual reality of EmotionAI WILL actors ever be replaced by computer-generated models?

It was once a laughable and much-derided idea. How could those blank-faced avatars possibly match the wild-eyed menace of a Jack Nicholson or the smouldering seductiveness of Angelina Jolie?

But is it now such a fanciful notion?

The world of computer generated imagery (CGI) has progressed with lightning speed, appearing, often imperceptibly, in almost every Hollywood movie. And major box office hits such as Spartan epic 300 and Norse fantasy Beowulf have been shot entirely on a blue screen soundstages, with characters and scenery inserted later by computer whizzes.

But these ‘motion capture’ processes remain vastly expensive - not least because each wrinkle of an eyebrow or twitch of the cheek (for instance, Andy Serkis as Gollum in Lord of the Rings) must be transferred to the CGI character’s face.

Could actors be totally cut out the loop, with computer images demonstrating the subtle range of emotions that Hollywood actors are so well paid to deliver?

It is a problem that Ian Wilson, chief executive of EmotionAI, based on the Cambridge Science Park, has tried to crack. And he is halfway there with some innovative software that allows animated figures to simulate a startling array of emotions at the click of a button.

Not just a horrified stare or an angry grimace either.

Animators blend a mix of moods - including aggression, passivity, pleasure, surprise - to create millions of facial expressions, which are then reflected in the body’s altered posture and respiration.

Ian, who has worked in the US, Japan and Canada for various artificial intelligence-centred firms, believes his product will put CGI into the hands of novices and amateurs for the first time.

“Because it’s so easy to play with, you can open it up to non-professionals - a 5-year-old could start using it,” he says confidently.

“It’s not at the level of motion capture, which relies on transferring actors’ expressions onto CGI images, such as Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button.

“But if you role this into the games’ market, it has huge potential. In the hands of an expert, you could create some amazing things very quickly.

“Typically, an animator would say ‘a bit more cheerful’ and the computer people would take a week to come back with something - here, it is just at the click of a button.

“When you are creating a vast world in computer games populated with hundreds of character, it is fabulously expensive to make each character life-like. That is why avatars are often very wooden and unemotional. The face has 51 muscles and our technology simulates each of these changing according to mood.

“These emotional states also have distinct patterns of respiration, posture, blinking and gaze, so the body matches the facial expressions.

“It means you could create a million - or even a billion - characters in a virtual world, who all respond in a human to each other.

W h e n characters run through a game, it is often strange as none of the otherpeople react to each.

This could change so that characters react with different emotions.”

The commercial potential of the emotional artificial intelligence could be very significant.

It could humanise the stilted worlds of virtual reality, such as the increasingly popular Second Life.

It could hasten the arrival of more ’social interaction’ computer games, such as the 100-million selling Sims, which Ian believes will eventually overtake the traditional shoot-em-up.

Amateur animators could create their own Toy Story-style digital animations - without the costly sets, acting talent and productions of the major studios.

It could also be used by architects, businesses, defence training organisations, to populate entire worlds of seemingly sentient beings, while digital interactive advertising is also a possibility.

The possibilities are mind-boggling. By introducing ‘humanity’ - or a version of it
* into the cyber world, EmotionAI are taking a step into realm only really explored by science fiction. There might even be a film made about it.

Ian Wilson left school at 16 to work as a management trainee, becoming an assistant to a chief executive officer.

“My goal from childhood was to be an entrepreneur - I wanted to run my own business.”

He set up a warehousing and storage business at the age of 23, which he ran for seven years before deciding to pursue his dreams of running a technology business.

After studying artificial intelligence at Westminster University, he headed for the US, where he developed training programmes for special forces involving AI, which eventually became a virtual reality attraction at Disneyland in Florida.

The 41-year-old, who originally hails from Leeds, later moved to Canada to run an AI-centred business before heading to Tokyo in 2000, where he lived until last year.

“I was based in Tokyo and moved to Cambridge because of the business climate - the funding, the business networks - is here, while there is also a better quality of life.”

Ian employs four people at EmotionAI’s base at the Cambridge Innovation Centre on the city’s science park. The company, which won a research and development grant from the East of England Development Agency, will launch in November, but has already secured its first client, a Cambridge software firm.