Maia: A Real-time Non-Verbal Chat for Human-AI Interaction

Modeling face-to-face communication in computer vision, which focuses on recognizing and analyzing nonverbal cues and behaviors during interactions, serves as the foundation for our proposed alternative to text-based Human-AI interaction. By leveraging nonverbal visual communication, through facial expressions, head and body movements, we aim to enhance engagement and capture the user's attention through a novel improvisational element, that goes beyond mirroring gestures. Our goal is to track and analyze facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues in real-time, and use this information to build models that can predict and understand human behavior. Operating in real-time and requiring minimal computational resources, our approach signifies a major leap forward in making AI interactions more natural and accessible. We offer three different complementary approaches, based on retrieval, statistical, and deep learning techniques. A key novelty of our work is the integration of an artistic component atop an efficient human-computer interaction system, using art as a medium to transmit emotions. Our approach is not art-specific and can be adapted to various paintings, animations, and avatars. In our experiments, we compare state-of-the-art diffusion models as mediums for emotion translation in 2D, and our 3D avatar, Maia, that we introduce in this work, with not just facial movements but also body motions for a more natural and engaging experience. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in translating AI-generated emotions into human-relatable expressions, through both human and automatic evaluation procedures, highlighting its potential to significantly enhance the naturalness and engagement of Human-AI interactions across various applications.