Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing arm has introduced its updated artificial intelligence (AI) model, Animate Anyone 2, which the company touts as simplifying the animation of lifelike characters with just a static image and one video cue.

Unlike previous character-animation methods that solely use motion signals, Animate Anyone 2 achieves high-fidelity character image animation by processing both motion and environmental signals from reference content, such as source videos, to generate new clips, according to a technical study published last week by Tongyi Lab, the large language model (LLM) research and development unit of Alibaba Cloud, via arXiv – an open-access repository of academic papers. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.