# REACT 2025: the Third Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation Challenge

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17223 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17223/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [wav2vec 2.0: A Framework for Self-Supervised Learning of Speech Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11477/) (2020)
- [TEACH: Temporal Action Composition for 3D Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.04066/) (2022)
- [Learning to Listen: Modeling Non-Deterministic Dyadic Facial Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08451/) (2022)
- [FaceVerse: a Fine-grained and Detail-controllable 3D Face Morphable Model from a Hybrid Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14057/) (2022)
- [FACIAL: Synthesizing Dynamic Talking Face with Implicit Attribute Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07938/) (2021)
- [Learning Multi-dimensional Edge Feature-based AU Relation Graph for Facial Action Unit Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01782/) (2022)
- [Responsive Listening Head Generation: A Benchmark Dataset and Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.13548/) (2021)
- [Dyadic Interaction Modeling for Social Behavior Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09069/) (2024)
- [Context-Aware Personality Inference in Dyadic Scenarios: Introducing the UDIVA Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.14259/) (2020)
- [ReactFace: Online Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation in Dyadic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15748/) (2023)
- [Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation in Dyadic Interaction Settings: What, Why and How?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.06514/) (2023)
- [REACT 2024: the Second Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.05166/) (2024)
- [Interactive Generative Adversarial Networks for Facial Expression Generation in Dyadic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09092/) (2018)
- [Beyond Talking -- Generating Holistic 3D Human Dyadic Motion for Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19467/) (2024)
- [GRATIS: Deep Learning Graph Representation with Task-specific Topology and Multi-dimensional Edge Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12482/) (2022)
- [Reversible Graph Neural Network-based Reaction Distribution Learning for Multiple Appropriate Facial Reactions Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15270/) (2023)
- [DEGSTalk: Decomposed Per-Embedding Gaussian Fields for Hair-Preserving Talking Face Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20148/) (2024)
- [Robust Facial Reactions Generation: An Emotion-Aware Framework with Modality Compensation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15798/) (2024)
- [Latent Behavior Diffusion for Sequential Reaction Generation in Dyadic Setting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07901/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [DyaDiT: A Multi-Modal Diffusion Transformer for Socially Favorable Dyadic Gesture Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.23165/) (2026)
- [OmniResponse: Online Multimodal Conversational Response Generation in Dyadic Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21724/) (2025)
- [MAUGen: A Unified Diffusion Approach for Multi-Identity Facial Expression and AU Label Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00583/) (2026)
- [ECHO: Towards Emotionally Appropriate and Contextually Aware Interactive Head Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17427/) (2026)
- [REACT 2026: The Fourth Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation Challenge: Personalised MAFRG and Appropriate EEG Reaction Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07935/) (2026)
- [Conversational Human Audio-visual Talking Dialogue Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.02799/) (2026)
- [Listen Before You Speak: Response Planning from Listener Facial Reactions for Conversational Speech Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21683/) (2026)
- [ResDiffFRG: Residual Diffusion for Multiple Appropriate Facial Reaction Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33749/) (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)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In dyadic interactions, a broad spectrum of human facial reactions might be appropriate for responding to each human speaker behaviour. Following the successful organisation of the REACT 2023 and REACT 2024 challenges, we are proposing the REACT 2025 challenge encouraging the development and benchmarking of Machine Learning (ML) models that can be used to generate multiple appropriate, diverse, realistic and synchronised human-style facial reactions expressed by human listeners in response to an input stimulus (i.e., audio-visual behaviours expressed by their corresponding speakers). As a key of the challenge, we provide challenge participants with the first natural and large-scale multi-modal MAFRG dataset (called MARS) recording 137 human-human dyadic interactions containing a total of 2856 interaction sessions covering five different topics. In addition, this paper also presents the challenge guidelines and the performance of our baselines on the two proposed sub-challenges: Offline MAFRG and Online MAFRG, respectively. The challenge baseline code is publicly available at https://github.com/reactmultimodalchallenge/baseline_react2025