# MEMO: Memory-Guided Diffusion for Expressive Talking Video Generation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04448 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04448/

## Key facts

- Cited by 38 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio, speech and music, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 49 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Dec 2024.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Audio, speech and music](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/audio-speech-and-music/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 49)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Classifier-Free Diffusion Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12598/) (2022)
- [SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01952/) (2023)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [wav2vec 2.0: A Framework for Self-Supervised Learning of Speech Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11477/) (2020)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [AnimateDiff: Animate Your Personalized Text-to-Image Diffusion Models without Specific Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04725/) (2023)
- [A Lip Sync Expert Is All You Need for Speech to Lip Generation In The Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10010/) (2020)
- [DynamiCrafter: Animating Open-domain Images with Video Diffusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.12190/) (2023)
- [SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12194/) (2022)
- [MakeItTalk: Speaker-Aware Talking-Head Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12992/) (2020)
- [CelebV-HQ: A Large-Scale Video Facial Attributes Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12393/) (2022)
- [EMO: Emote Portrait Alive -- Generating Expressive Portrait Videos with Audio2Video Diffusion Model under Weak Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17485/) (2024)
- [emotion2vec: Self-Supervised Pre-Training for Speech Emotion Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15185/) (2023)
- [Hallo: Hierarchical Audio-Driven Visual Synthesis for Portrait Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08801/) (2024)
- [EchoMimic: Lifelike Audio-Driven Portrait Animations through Editable Landmark Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08136/) (2024)
- [AniPortrait: Audio-Driven Synthesis of Photorealistic Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17694/) (2024)
- [VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.10667/) (2024)
- [VFHQ: A High-Quality Dataset and Benchmark for Video Face Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03409/) (2022)
- [TransNet V2: An effective deep network architecture for fast shot transition detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04838/) (2020)
- [StyleHEAT: One-Shot High-Resolution Editable Talking Face Generation via Pre-trained StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04036/) (2022)
- [Lip Movements Generation at a Glance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10404/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Matrix-game 2.0: An open-source real-time and streaming interactive world model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13009/) (2025)
- [WorldMem: Long-term Consistent World Simulation with Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12369/) (2025)
- [HunyuanPortrait: Implicit Condition Control for Enhanced Portrait Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18860/) (2025)
- [Matrix-3D: Omnidirectional Explorable 3D World Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.08086/) (2025)
- [InsTaG: Learning Personalized 3D Talking Head from Few-Second Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20387/) (2025)
- [Audio-visual Controlled Video Diffusion with Masked Selective State Spaces Modeling for Natural Talking Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02542/) (2025)
- [MagicInfinite: Generating Infinite Talking Videos with Your Words and Voice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05978/) (2025)
- [ARIG: Autoregressive Interactive Head Generation for Real-time Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00472/) (2025)
- [SkyReels-Audio: Omni Audio-Conditioned Talking Portraits in Video Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00830/) (2025)
- [DriveGEN: Generalized and Robust 3D Detection in Driving via Controllable Text-to-Image Diffusion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11122/) (2025)
- [SlideTailor: Personalized Presentation Slide Generation for Scientific Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20292/) (2025)
- [Beyond Isolated Words: Diffusion Brush for Handwritten Text-Line Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.03256/) (2025)
- [MAVOS-DD: Multilingual Audio-Video Open-Set Deepfake Detection Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11109/) (2025)
- [Playmate: Flexible Control of Portrait Animation via 3D-Implicit Space Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07203/) (2025)
- [Playmate2: Training-Free Multi-Character Audio-Driven Animation via Diffusion Transformer with Reward Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.12089/) (2025)
- [AvatarForcing: One-Step Streaming Talking Avatars via Local-Future Sliding-Window Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14331/) (2026)
- [RAP: Real-time Audio-driven Portrait Animation with Video Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05115/) (2025)
- [PIA: Deepfake Detection Using Phoneme-Temporal and Identity-Dynamic Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14241/) (2025)
- [Video Generation Models as World Models: Efficient Paradigms, Architectures and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.28489/) (2026)
- [PESTalk: Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation with Personalized Emotional Styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05121/) (2025)
- [X-Actor: Emotional and Expressive Long-Range Portrait Acting from Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02944/) (2025)
- [EditYourself: Audio-Driven Generation and Manipulation of Talking Head Videos with Diffusion Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22127/) (2026)
- [Talking Head Generation via AU-Guided Landmark Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19749/) (2025)
- [Performance Decay in Deepfake Detection: The Limitations of Training on Outdated Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.07009/) (2025)
- [AUHead: Realistic Emotional Talking Head Generation via Action Units Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.09534/) (2026)
- [FlowPortrait: Reinforcement Learning for Audio-Driven Portrait Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00159/) (2026)
- [Lightning Fast Caching-based Parallel Denoising Prediction for Accelerating Talking Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00052/) (2025)
- [YingVideo-MV: Music-Driven Multi-Stage Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02492/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Body and Face Motion: Datasets, Performance Evaluation Metrics and Generative Techniques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09005/) (2025)
- [The Alpha Blending Hypothesis: Compositing Shortcut in Deepfake Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10334/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in video diffusion models have unlocked new potential for realistic audio-driven talking video generation. However, achieving seamless audio-lip synchronization, maintaining long-term identity consistency, and producing natural, audio-aligned expressions in generated talking videos remain significant challenges. To address these challenges, we propose Memory-guided EMOtion-aware diffusion (MEMO), an end-to-end audio-driven portrait animation approach to generate identity-consistent and expressive talking videos. Our approach is built around two key modules: (1) a memory-guided temporal module, which enhances long-term identity consistency and motion smoothness by developing memory states to store information from a longer past context to guide temporal modeling via linear attention; and (2) an emotion-aware audio module, which replaces traditional cross attention with multi-modal attention to enhance audio-video interaction, while detecting emotions from audio to refine facial expressions via emotion adaptive layer norm. Extensive quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that MEMO generates more realistic talking videos across diverse image and audio types, outperforming state-of-the-art methods in overall quality, audio-lip synchronization, identity consistency, and expression-emotion alignment.