Facebook is developing new reactive profile pictures that pull faces like the cheeky portraits at Hogwarts in “Harry Potter.”

Researchers in Israel developed the software, called “bringing portraits to life,” alongside Facebook. The new feature will make your photo smile and wink in response to likes and comments on your page. The tool can take a single image of a face and animate it with happy, sad or angry expressions by mapping it to the movement of real people’s faces.

While the effect looks slightly bizarre, a study found half of people who saw the animations were tricked into thinking they were real. The system is improving all the time, the researchers said. “I think eventually they will be completely indistinguishable* from real videos,” said researcher Hadar Averbuch-Elor.

The tool creates animations using a base video of a completely different person. The model does not have to be the same gender or look anything like the person in the profile photo. The expression the model makes is mapped directly onto the eyes, mouth, cheeks and other parts of the profile photo’s face so that it looks like animated movement.(SD-Agencies)