# ARTalk: Speech-Driven 3D Head Animation via Autoregressive Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20323 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20323/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [wav2vec 2.0: A Framework for Self-Supervised Learning of Speech Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11477/) (2020)
- [HuBERT: Self-Supervised Speech Representation Learning by Masked Prediction of Hidden Units](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07447/) (2021)
- [Arbitrary Style Transfer in Real-time with Adaptive Instance Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06868/) (2017)
- [Human Motion Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14916/) (2022)
- [Visual Autoregressive Modeling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02905/) (2024)
- [Moshi: a speech-text foundation model for real-time dialogue](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00037/) (2024)
- [Learning an Animatable Detailed 3D Face Model from In-The-Wild Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04012/) (2020)
- [SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12194/) (2022)
- [Capture, Learning, and Synthesis of 3D Speaking Styles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03079/) (2019)
- [EMOCA: Emotion Driven Monocular Face Capture and Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11312/) (2022)
- [Towards Robust Blind Face Restoration with Codebook Lookup Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.11253/) (2022)
- [MeshTalk: 3D Face Animation from Speech using Cross-Modality Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08223/) (2021)
- [Listen, Denoise, Action! Audio-Driven Motion Synthesis with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09707/) (2022)
- [CodeTalker: Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation with Discrete Motion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02379/) (2023)
- [VFHQ: A High-Quality Dataset and Benchmark for Video Face Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03409/) (2022)
- [Towards Metrical Reconstruction of Human Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06607/) (2022)
- [DiffusionNet: Discretization Agnostic Learning on Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00888/) (2020)
- [EmoTalk: Speech-Driven Emotional Disentanglement for 3D Face Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11089/) (2023)
- [Taming Diffusion Models for Audio-Driven Co-Speech Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09119/) (2023)
- [Emotional Speech-Driven Animation with Content-Emotion Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08990/) (2023)
- [Real3D-Portrait: One-shot Realistic 3D Talking Portrait Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08503/) (2024)
- [Generalizable and Animatable Gaussian Head Avatar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07971/) (2024)
- [DiffPoseTalk: Speech-Driven Stylistic 3D Facial Animation and Head Pose Generation via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00434/) (2023)
- [FaceDiffuser: Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation Synthesis Using Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11306/) (2023)
- [GPAvatar: Generalizable and Precise Head Avatar from Image(s)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10215/) (2024)
- [SelfTalk: A Self-Supervised Commutative Training Diagram to Comprehend 3D Talking Faces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10799/) (2023)
- [Portrait4D-v2: Pseudo Multi-View Data Creates Better 4D Head Synthesizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.13570/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [UniLS: End-to-End Audio-Driven Avatars for Unified Listening and Speaking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09327/) (2025)
- [Towards Interactive Intelligence for Digital Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13674/) (2025)
- [ViBES: A Conversational Agent with Behaviorally-Intelligent 3D Virtual Body](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14234/) (2025)
- [REST: Diffusion-based Real-time End-to-end Streaming Talking Head Generation via ID-Context Caching and Asynchronous Streaming Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11229/) (2025)
- [FluentAvatar: Flicker-Free Talking-Head Animation via Phoneme-Guided Autoregressive Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.12052/) (2025)
- [MANGO:Natural Multi-speaker 3D Talking Head Generation via 2D-Lifted Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.01749/) (2026)
- [A2-LLM: An End-to-end Conversational Audio Avatar Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04913/) (2026)
- [EmbodiedHead: Real-Time Listening and Speaking Avatar for Conversational Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17211/) (2026)
- [FMReward: Aligning and Evaluating Audio-Driven 3D Facial Animation with Human Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15296/) (2026)
- [KeyframeFace: Language-Driven Facial Animation via Semantic Keyframes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11321/) (2025)
- [Splat-Portrait: Generalizing Talking Heads with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18633/) (2026)
- [3DXTalker: Unifying Identity, Lip Sync, Emotion, and Spatial Dynamics in Expressive 3D Talking Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10516/) (2026)
- [GDPO-Listener: Expressive Interactive Head Generation via Auto-Regressive Flow Matching and Group reward-Decoupled Policy Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25020/) (2026)
- [PianoFlow: Music-Aware Streaming Piano Motion Generation with Bimanual Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12856/) (2026)
- [Personalizing Causal Audio-Driven Facial Motion via Dynamic Multi-modal Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23692/) (2026)
- [OmniRobotHome: A Multi-Camera Home Platform for Real-Time Human-Robot Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.28197/) (2026)
- [CapTalk: Text-Guided Stylization and Speech-Driven 3D Head Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.29316/) (2026)
- [KM-Speaker: Keypoint-Based Style Control for High-Quality Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation and Dialogue Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28568/) (2026)
- [FacePlex: Toward Natural Full-Duplex Conversational Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30145/) (2026)
- [FFAvatar: Feed-Forward 4D Head Avatar Reconstruction from Sparse Portrait Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30347/) (2026)
- [SubtleTalk: Generating Controllable Weakly-correlated Facial Dynamics for 3D Talking Heads via Residual Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.06408/) (2026)
- [InterSing: Explicit Interaction Dynamics for 3D Duet Singing Animation and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04903/) (2026)
- [Decoupled Self-Forcing Distillation for Streaming Talking Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10317/) (2026)
- [EMODY Flow: Emotion-Aware Audio-Driven Full-Body Motion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16011/) (2026)
- [ComplexSync: High-Fidelity and Real-Time Lip Sync in Complex Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.29225/) (2026)
- [Seeing Speech: Learning Visible Articulatory Dynamics for Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30517/) (2026)
- [Beyond End-to-End Black Box Mapping: An Intentional Agent Framework for Cognitive-driven Facial Reaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34419/) (2026)
- [EvolvingAvatar: Interactive 3D Head Generation That Adapts as Conversations Unfold](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35616/) (2026)
- [The Shape of Speech: A Geometric Measure of Coarticulation for Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03436/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Speech-driven 3D facial animation aims to generate realistic lip movements and facial expressions for 3D head models from arbitrary audio clips. Although existing diffusion-based methods are capable of producing natural motions, their slow generation speed limits their application potential. In this paper, we introduce a novel autoregressive model that achieves real-time generation of highly synchronized lip movements and realistic head poses and eye blinks by learning a mapping from speech to a multi-scale motion codebook. Furthermore, our model can adapt to unseen speaking styles, enabling the creation of 3D talking avatars with unique personal styles beyond the identities seen during training. Extensive evaluations and user studies demonstrate that our method outperforms existing approaches in lip synchronization accuracy and perceived quality.