An app makes absurdly good musicians out of WoW heroes like Jaina or Khadgar. The community celebrates this.
That absurd things sometimes happen in the community of World of Warcraft is now everyday life. But you rarely see the two archmages Jaina Proudmoore and Khadgar performing some songs and looking quite good while doing it. An AI makes it possible – and is celebrated by the community for it.
What kind of AI is this? The app Wombo.ai (link to the app’s page) uses modern AI to change the lips and facial expressions of photos so that they match the lyrics of various songs. This is actually intended for real photos, but it works surprisingly well with other faces and fantasy characters – like those from Warcraft.
The community is very excited: A few hours ago, the first video of this kind was shared in the World of Warcraft subreddit, showing Jaina performing the song “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. After just half a day, the clip has already received over 8,800 upvotes on Reddit and garnered numerous comments:
AI gone too far? from r/wow
Some of the most highly upvoted comments are:
- “Secret cutscene when Arthas finally returns from the Maw.”
- “Wow, the smile between the words is incredibly convincing. She is so emotionally charged! This is amazing.”
- “As funny and cool as this is, this AI thing really frightens me with all the possibilities that malicious people could do to innocents.”
In another version, Jaina then sings “Don’t Cha” by the Pussycat Dolls – which has also received a lot of attention:
Finally, Khadgar also gets to perform a bit of music. He is often affectionately referred to as “Daddy Khadgar” or “Dadghar” in the community – so of course there is only one song that fits him – the “Ding Dong Song” by Günther.
Oh you touched it from r/wow
The app works particularly well with WoW: Interestingly, the results with WoW characters in many cases look better and more convincing than with real photos. The real photos often appear distorted and you quickly realize that the movements do not match the original.
In WoW, due to the comic-style graphics, faces are generally manipulated more strongly, so the WoW faces harmonize much better with the AI. This then leads to entertaining clips like the ones presented here.
What do you think of such antics and this one in particular? Can you still look “Daddy Khadgar” in the face without blushing?
