Did dance challenges just become easy?

It’s been a good few years since I’ve busted any wild dance moves - I’ve watched on as clever folks have done the Wednesday Adams on TikTok; but never considered actually participating in any of it.

I’ve got all the excuses … but mainly a) too old; and b) can’t dance. That’ll do right!?

But maybe also quietly wishing on the sidelines I could do it without making an idiot of myself…

If you’ve felt any of the same feelings and wish you could effortlessly become the TikTok star you always thought you could be, your wish might actually be about to come true.

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Runway’s Motion Brush, but this new tool, being developed by ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) is kind of next level.

MagicAnimate allows you to animate static images into life-like videos, potentially making you a viral video star overnight without ever having to bust a single move.

Picture the Mona Lisa coming to life like in the below image - this is what this technology does.

Curious about the science behind it? 

I’m going to oversimplify here: It’s an AI model which takes the appearance of a character from an original image, pairs it with a motion video, combines it with some video diffusion smarts and you get the effect below.

Byte Dance is not the only one working on this type of technology - Alibaba is working on something similar called Animate Anyone.

I’m guessing this means that we’re not too far from seeing more AI Influencers on social platforms, and once again wondering what’s fake, what’s real. What will it mean for influencer marketing in the longer term?

Alternatively, will we all be using these tools to create a new level of creativity and interaction in marketing campaigns?

If you want to read more about this tech or try it yourself, you can do so here.

Happy Hunting 🚀

PS. I’m still travelling and my last workshop for 2023 is tomorrow. So I’m looking forward to getting back to posting more again when I get home!