**Yoon Yeo-jeong in her 20s and Choi Min-sik in her 30s, their faces have completely changed… ‘This magic’ attracts money**
#1. In the Disney Plus original series ‘Casino’, the appearance of Choi Min-sik, an actor in his 30s, was recreated and made a fuss. Choi Min-sik, in his 60s, put on a wig and acted out his 30s. The rest was up to artificial intelligence (AI). Using ‘de-aging’ technology, wrinkles were erased and skin tone corrected. His voice also embodied his youth. I pulled out the voice of Choi Min-sik in his 30s who played ‘Kuchong’ in ‘The Years of Ambition’.
#2. Actress Yoon Yeo-jeong in her 20s in the 1960s and 1970s appears in a TV commercial that KB Life showed since last month. She became more dramatically younger than Choi Min-sik in ‘Casino’. This is thanks to the fact that she created a new virtual human using AI. The face, voice, gestures, and facial expressions of her young Yun Yeo-jeong added mystery to the black-and-white screen.
Startups are jumping into the ‘retro’ craze. The technology of reviving a star’s past or restoring forgotten memories is in the limelight. Investments are also pouring into startups with AI technology that creates virtual humans and separates sounds.
Startups Showcasing ‘Past Summoning Art’
Domestic startups with de-aging technology are active all over the place. The young Choi Min-sik in ‘Casino’, whose season 2 was released on the 15th, had the technology of domestic startups.
Young Choi Min-sik’s voice is the work of startups Gaudio Lab and Supertone. First of all, Gaudio Lab used sound source separation technology to extract the voice after removing ambient noise and noise from past videos. Then, Supertone applied ‘Voice De-Aging’ technology to this voice so that the voice of ‘Choi Min-sik in his 60s’ was naturally transformed into the voice of ‘Choi Min-sik in his 30s’ in various lines. If Gaudio Lab made the ingredients, Supertone played the role of the chef.
Choi Min-sik’s face was handled by C-Jes Gulliver Studio, which was launched in 2020 as a subsidiary of C-JeS Entertainment. The face de-aging technology was used, in which AI learns the faces that appear in past movies and then overlays them on Choi Min-sik. It is explained that each part of the face such as the eyes, nose, mouth, etc. was classified and learned so that the details of the acting would not collapse.
The young Yeo-Jung Yoon in the KB Life advertisement was created by the virtual human startup D.O.B.Studio. The face of 24-year-old Yoon Yeo-jeong in the 1971 movie â??The Woman of Fireâ? was mixed in half with the current appearance in her 70s, and then AI implemented it through deep learning. In addition, the voice of the young Yoon Yeo-jeong was reproduced through voice synthesis technology by the startup Humelo. Thanks to the creation of a completely new virtual human beyond correction, the degree of change is greater than that of the young Choi Min-sik. Instead, it is evaluated as less natural.
Last month, in an entertainment program, the virtual human of the late actor Park Yoon-bae, who played the role of ‘Eung-sam-i’ in ‘Jeonwon Diary’, made a surprise appearance. This is a technology introduced by AI startup Beam Studio. It is possible to communicate in real time according to the shape of the mouth and facial expression. Also, at the end of last year, an AI startup, Neosapiens, showed off its technology of extracting the old voice of a father who passed away from an old audio tape on a public TV entertainment program.
AI-created retro… Investment industry pays attention
It is an analysis that AI plays a large role in the development of the technology to recall the past. For example, Gaudio Lab’s sound source separation technology used AI that can model not only quantitative values â??â??but also qualitative measures such as the degree of sound quality perceived by humans. In addition, the volume of sound is also explained by introducing the concept of ‘loudness’, not a physical unit, to consider the volume that people actually feel. An official from Gaudio Lab explained, “We applied a loss function that reflects hearing characteristics, and various experts, including a doctorate in acoustic engineering, participated in the acoustic evaluation process to apply the optimal learning model.”
‘Face de-aging’, which rejuvenates the face, is also an integration of AI technology. AI learns the actor’s past works, analyzes the face, and then synthesizes a young face according to the mouth shape and facial expression of the actual actor in the current video. Compared to the existing de-aging method, in which the equipment was applied to the actor’s face individually and the workers adhered to it, it was evaluated that the work time and cost were drastically reduced.
Furthermore, virtual humans are also an example of the development of AI technology. The existing deepfake-based synthesized virtual content lacks naturalness due to glitching (screen breakage). A virtual human created by AI can add more naturalness than a simple deep fake thanks to a new face itself through deep learning. DioByStudio, which created ‘Young Yeo-Jeong’, has strengths in ‘virtual face’ generation technology that creates a new face after learning face data.
The investment industry is also paying attention as the technology of startups enters one after another in large-scale contents. Thanks to its sound source separation technology, Gaudio Lab has attracted more than 16 billion won in accumulated funds from Naver D2SF, Samsung Venture Investment, and Softbank Ventures. Supertone, which collaborated with Gaudio Lab in ‘Casino’, was recently acquired by Hive and was valued at over 100 billion won. DioB Studio has also received love calls from CJ Investment and others. Beam Studio was selected by SparkLabs.
The investment industry pays attention to the infinite ‘scalability’ of these startups. It means that the retro craze can develop into a technology that enhances the quality of content ‘experience’ rather than simply stimulating the nostalgia of the past. For example, sound source separation technology can be used to create MR of a sound source or to increase the volume of a specific line in a video. In addition, AI technology and virtual humans that have entered de-aging can be used in places such as kiosks and concierge services.
In particular, ‘professionalism’ is cited as a field in which startups have strengths compared to large companies. This means that it is easy to gather specialized personnel in one place. An official from an AI start-up evaluated, “The more ‘niche market’ where the market is not yet large, the more adventurous start-ups can attract outstanding talent.”
Hollywood is aging too
Overseas, startups with de-aging technology are attracting attention, especially in Hollywood. For example, in the Disney+ original ‘The Mandalorian’, the young actor Mark Hamill, who plays the main character Luke Skywalker, appears. The voice is the work of Ukrainian AI startup Respitcher. The voice of 68-year-old Mark Hamill was transformed into that of a 20-year-old. He used AI-based voice cloning solution (voice cloning) technology. After learning the voice of an actor in his youth for about 1-2 hours, he creates a voice that fits the line.
In last year’s ‘hit’ movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, UK-based AI startup Sonantik created the voice of actor Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer’s battle with throat cancer made it difficult for him to speak. Similar to the case of Respitcher, this company also used technology to copy the voice after learning the voice of an actor in the past. It is known that Sonantik was acquired by Spotify last year and was recognized for a ransom value of close to $100 million (approximately 130 billion won).
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https://www.hankyung.com/it/article/202302107869i