Kakao Brain Develops 'Face Swapping' Technology Usable for Metaverse and Virtual Human Creation

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] Kakao Brain has developed an enhanced 'face swapping' technology. It is expected to be utilized in the future for metaverse (extended virtual world) and virtual human production.

Kakao Brain announced on the 9th that it has developed a new face swapping technology called the 'Smooth-Swap' model. Face swapping is a technology commonly used to exchange faces of people in photos on social networking services (SNS) and other platforms.

The 'Smooth-Swap' model is much simplified compared to existing technologies and enables faster and more stable face swapping, Kakao Brain explained.

Kakao Brain plans to present a paper containing groundbreaking research results on face swapping at the oral session 2 of the academic conference 'CVPR 2022' held in June. CVPR is considered one of the top three international conferences in the field of computer vision. Last year, Kakao Brain presented a paper on the development of a model that understands interactions between objects.

Kakao Brain stated, "Last year, only papers ranked in the top 4% were given the opportunity to present at the CVPR oral session," adding, "A solo paper presentation at the oral session, which is granted to only a few of the accepted papers, demonstrates the company's excellent technological capabilities."

In particular, the simplified and enhanced performance of the Smooth-Swap model has increased its commercial viability and technological competitiveness. It can generate high-quality images even when changing the facial shape of the subject. The company expects that through the Smooth-Swap model, various digital humans such as virtual influencers, show hosts, and announcers can be developed in the future.

For example, by utilizing the Smooth-Swap model, it is possible to use the actual user's appearance as a more natural character form within the metaverse world.

Kim Il-doo, CEO of Kakao Brain, said, "We are very pleased to unveil the innovative Smooth-Swap model to the world," and added, "We believe that the Smooth-Swap model we have released will accelerate innovation in the field of face swapping technology and contribute to realizing the metaverse and future digital human services we have always dreamed of."