Tohoku University AI makes digital humans move as they speak

Nov 13, 2026
DynaConTalk generates coordinated body, hand and face movement from speech for virtual presenters and animated characters.

Researchers at Tohoku University and the University of Hong Kong have built DynaConTalk, an AI system that turns speech into coordinated 3D movement of the body, hands and face, the university announced.

The system splits movement into slower and faster parts so it can learn both broad posture changes and small gestures, and uses earlier movement to keep long speeches smooth. In a study with 30 participants it scored highest of three systems on naturalness, match with speech, synchronisation and variety. The work was published in ACM Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at SIGGRAPH Asia in December.

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