Hate Making Eye Contact During Video Calls? Have This AI Do It For You

Ever since the pandemic completely normalized constant video calls, people who find them to be anxiety inducing have been struggling with how unnatural is all feels. One of the worst parts of video calls is the awkward eye contact. You never really know if you should look at the person’s eyes or into your camera, as both feel bizarre and not fluidly natural. What if we told you an AI could do it for you instead?

Artificial intelligence company Nvidia has announced that its Eye Contact AI can use artificial intelligence to make it look like you are always making eye contact by looking into the camera, even if you’re not actually looking at the camera.

In promotional videos, Nvidia’s AI program makes it looks almost eerily realistic, and anybody watching the video would be truly hard pressed to identify that this program is being used on it. The AI works even if you are on the phone and have other things around your face.

Of course, some people might feel like a program like this is unnerving, and that could be made better if the company manages to make some small changes in order to make the gaze a bit less intense. However, this program has been a huge welcome to people who struggle with maintaining eye contact, especially on video calls.

This type of technology can be especially helpful for those on the autism spectrum, since for many, eye contact is especially difficult to do. This can make it look like they are disengaged from even if this is not the case. Eye Contact will alleviate some of that pressure.

There’s also a feature that allows you to disconnect, so if you back away from the camera at a certain distance, the program will stop the gaze and only start back up again once you are close enough to the camera once again.

Anyone who has the modern NVIDIA graphics card (models RTX 2060 and on) can use Eye Contact. The company has asked users to help them improve the program by asking them to test it out in different lighting, with different eye colors, and more. Of course, the AI is still in beta mode and will continue to evolve and improve over time.