# Let's Face It: Probabilistic Multi-modal Interlocutor-aware Generation of Facial Gestures in Dyadic Settings

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.09888 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09888/

## Key facts

- Cited by 36 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 11 Jun 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Listen, Denoise, Action! Audio-Driven Motion Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09707/) (2022)
- [Learning to Listen: Modeling Non-Deterministic Dyadic Facial Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08451/) (2022)
- [FaceDiffuser: Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation Synthesis Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11306/) (2023)
- [A Comprehensive Review of Data-Driven Co-Speech Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05339/) (2023)
- [The GENEA Challenge 2022: A large evaluation of data-driven co-speech gesture generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10441/) (2022)
- [Media2Face: Co-speech Facial Animation Generation With Multi-Modality Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15687/) (2024)
- [Affective Faces for Goal-Driven Dyadic Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10939/) (2023)
- [Dyadic Interaction Modeling for Social Behavior Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09069/) (2024)
- [FaceXHuBERT: Text-less Speech-driven E(X)pressive 3D Facial Animation Synthesis Using Self-Supervised Speech Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05416/) (2023)
- [Evaluating gesture generation in a large-scale open challenge: The GENEA Challenge 2022](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08737/) (2023)
- [The GENEA Challenge 2023: A large scale evaluation of gesture generation models in monadic and dyadic settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12646/) (2023)
- [Diffusion-Based Co-Speech Gesture Generation Using Joint Text and Audio Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05455/) (2023)
- [The Ethical Implications of Generative Audio Models: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05527/) (2023)
- [ReactFace: Online Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation in Dyadic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15748/) (2023)
- [Emotional Listener Portrait: Neural Listener Head Generation with Emotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00068/) (2023)
- [Beyond Talking -- Generating Holistic 3D Human Dyadic Motion for Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19467/) (2024)
- [Diff-TTSG: Denoising probabilistic integrated speech and gesture synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09417/) (2023)
- [Reversible Graph Neural Network-based Reaction Distribution Learning for Multiple Appropriate Facial Reactions Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15270/) (2023)
- [DiTaiListener: Controllable High Fidelity Listener Video Generation with Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.04010/) (2025)
- [Zero-Shot Style Transfer for Gesture Animation driven by Text and Speech using Adversarial Disentanglement of Multimodal Style Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01917/) (2022)
- [AMII: Adaptive Multimodal Inter-personal and Intra-personal Model for Adapted Behavior Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11310/) (2023)
- [Unified speech and gesture synthesis using flow matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05181/) (2023)
- [REACT2023: the first Multi-modal Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.06583/) (2023)
- [Towards the generation of synchronized and believable non-verbal facial behaviors of a talking virtual agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12804/) (2023)
- [Fake it to make it: Using synthetic data to remedy the data shortage in joint multimodal speech-and-gesture synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19622/) (2024)
- [Towards a GENEA Leaderboard -- an Extended, Living Benchmark for Evaluating and Advancing Conversational Motion Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06327/) (2024)
- [PolySLGen: Online Multimodal Speaking-Listening Reaction Generation in Polyadic Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08125/) (2026)
- [MRecGen: Multimodal Appropriate Reaction Generator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02609/) (2023)
- [Allo-AVA: A Large-Scale Multimodal Conversational AI Dataset for Allocentric Avatar Gesture Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16503/) (2024)
- [How Video Meetings Change Your Expression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00955/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To enable more natural face-to-face interactions, conversational agents need to adapt their behavior to their interlocutors. One key aspect of this is generation of appropriate non-verbal behavior for the agent, for example facial gestures, here defined as facial expressions and head movements. Most existing gesture-generating systems do not utilize multi-modal cues from the interlocutor when synthesizing non-verbal behavior. Those that do, typically use deterministic methods that risk producing repetitive and non-vivid motions. In this paper, we introduce a probabilistic method to synthesize interlocutor-aware facial gestures - represented by highly expressive FLAME parameters - in dyadic conversations. Our contributions are: a) a method for feature extraction from multi-party video and speech recordings, resulting in a representation that allows for independent control and manipulation of expression and speech articulation in a 3D avatar; b) an extension to MoGlow, a recent motion-synthesis method based on normalizing flows, to also take multi-modal signals from the interlocutor as input and subsequently output interlocutor-aware facial gestures; and c) a subjective evaluation assessing the use and relative importance of the input modalities. The results show that the model successfully leverages the input from the interlocutor to generate more appropriate behavior. Videos, data, and code available at: https://jonepatr.github.io/lets_face_it.