Have You Seen This? Everyone can dance now thanks to AI

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TECH LAND — Have you ever wanted to be a great dancer? Well, thanks to technology, now you can be — sort of.

You may have already heard of deepfakes, a technology that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a video where a real individual's image is digitally manipulated. Often, this technology is used maliciously, or at least in a way that should cause alarm, to depict familiar people saying or doing things they normally wouldn't.

But it turns out this technology can be used for something pretty cool as well: dancing.

A group of researchers from UC Berkeley put together this video called "Everybody Dance Now," and it's amazing. In the video, a "source subject" dances while a computer detects each pose and move that person makes. The moves are then reflected on a "target subject," who now looks like a pro-dancer. If you want to read the details of how it works, the researchers posted their paper here.

Yesterday's Have You Seen This?

The coolest part, in my opinion, is the end of the video when the researchers put ballet to the test. The video shows the target subjects attempting the complicated dance on their own, and it's, well, not pretty. Then the AI kicks in and they look like they've been taking ballet classes for years.

So, when I say that technology can make you a great dancer, I don't quite mean literally. But it can make you look like a great dancer, and that's what really matters, right? Just don't let any of your friends ask you to reenact those moves in person.