Truth behind the baby in Netflix’s Man vs Baby looking almost too perfect and is it actually AI?

Since Man vs Baby dropped on Netflix, people have been wondering whether the baby in the miniseries is actually real or if it is AI.

The Netflix series sees Rowan Atkinson return as Trevor Bingley, this time swapping a mischievous bee for an abandoned baby. As you’d expect, things go wrong very quickly. However, instead of just enjoying the chaos, I kept getting distracted by one thought: How is that baby doing all of this?

Babies don’t usually cooperate. They don’t sit still on cue, pull the perfect facial expression, or react at exactly the right moment. So when the baby in Man vs Baby keeps doing all of the above, it starts to feel a bit… off. Not in a bad way, just slightly too polished.

So, is the baby actually real?

Yes but also no. It turns out the show didn’t rely on just one baby. Instead, the production used identical twin babies, along with CGI and a bit of machine learning, to make everything work smoothly.

Speaking to LBB, director David Kerr confirmed that the show used a mix of real babies, CGI and machine learning to make everything work. So while there are real babies on screen, AI does play a part behind the scenes.

Kerr explained that they cast identical twin babies as the main “hero” infants, mainly because babies are only allowed to work on set for a very limited time each day. As he put it, a “six-month-old isn’t going to take direction”.

Because of that, relying on real babies alone just wasn’t practical.

So, how did they make the real and AI baby work?

via Netflix

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According to Kerr, the team wanted to push things as far as they could with technology. He said, “What we attempted to do is right at the cutting edge of what’s possible. We wanted to have a full CGI baby that looked totally indistinguishable from the hero baby, but would have exactly the action or expression any specific scene demanded.”

To do this, the production filmed the real babies during a performance capture session, using several cameras at once to record as many expressions as possible.

Kerr explained, “So we started with a performance capture session. Essentially pointing five cameras at each of our hero babies for a couple of hours in the hope of capturing a full gamut of expressions, waking, sleeping…”

Rowan Atkinson also spoke about how difficult it is to film with babies, mainly because of strict rules and schedules. He described it as “tricky”, adding, “The scheduling is tricky with babies.”

In some scenes, the baby’s face was digitally placed onto another baby who could crawl. In others, CGI was used to get the exact movement or reaction needed without keeping a real infant on set for too long.

So if you watched Man vs Baby thinking, that baby doesn’t quite look real, you weren’t imagining it. The show didn’t replace the baby with AI entirely, but AI was definitely used to help things along.

It might feel slightly uncanny at times, but it’s also what allows the comedy to work so smoothly.

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