Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head and displaying the text of an electronic book, such that the head has a mouth which moves in accordance with the speech of the text of the electronic book to be output by the head and a word or group of words from the text is displayed while simultaneously being mimed by the mouth, wherein input text is divided into a sequence of acoustic units, which are converted to a sequence of image vectors and into a sequence of text display indicators. The sequence of image vectors is outputted as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with a selected expression, and the sequence of text display indicators is output as video which is synchronized with the lip movement of the head.

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head and displaying the text of an electronic book, such that the head has a mouth which moves in accordance with the speech of the text of the electronic book to be output by the head and a word or group of words from the text is displayed while simultaneously being mimed by the mouth, said method comprising: inputting the text of said book; dividing said input text into a sequence of acoustic units; determining expression characteristics for the inputted text; calculating a duration for each acoustic unit using a duration model; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; converting said sequence of acoustic units into a sequence of text display indicators using an text dis