Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Automated Lip Reading Technology via Google Blogoscoped by Philipp Lenssen on May 25, 2007
Fascinating: a computer program analyzes a person's lip movement in a silent movie (here: Hitler filmed by Eva Braun), matches the frames to a large library of pronounced words to find out what was being said, and then plays back the sound via a computer generated voice. This way, fully automated, a silent film turns into a film with speech, and historical archives reveal new information. This technology was foreshadowed in Kubrick's 2001 - quote Wikipedia (spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the movie): <<In 2001: A Space Odyssey, after HAL appears to be mistaken about a fault in the spacecraft, astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole consider disconnecting his cognitive circuits [they are moving to an air-sealed capsule in the spacecraft, but one that has windows]. They believe that HAL cannot hear them, but are unaware that HAL is capable of lip reading. Faced with the prospect of disconnection, HAL decides to kill the astronauts, in order to protect and continue the directive he is programmed with.>> [By Philipp Lenssen | Original post | Comments] [Advertisement] Google books at eBay: background info on Google, AdWords, AdSense, Blogger and more... [Advertise here] Things you can do from here: - Visit the original item on Google Blogoscoped - Subscribe to Google Blogoscoped using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all all your favorite sites
