How is this different from motion transfer?

Motion transfer pulls movement out of a reference clip and applies it to a character in a scene the model invents. Character swap keeps your scene and changes only the person in it. Different jobs, opposite directions.

Does it work on images as well as video?

Yes, and it is the same slot. Upload a clip and you get a clip; upload a still and you get a still. Video is the main path, so length and resolution options appear once a clip is in place.

Do I have to upload a photo of the replacement character?

Yes. At least one is required. A description alone gives the model no identity to hold, so the result reads as a different stranger rather than the character you had in mind. More reference angles make the face steadier across frames.

How many reference images can I use?

Up to four for a video, and up to thirteen for a still image — the two run on different models. You will be told before generating rather than after.

Will the background, camera move and timing change?

They should not. The instruction sent with your footage is to hold the shot, camera movement, background, lighting and timing, and to fit the replacement into that light rather than carry its own.

What is the difference between the three swap scopes?

Whole character takes face, hair, build and clothing from the reference. Face only keeps the original body and clothing. Outfit only keeps the original performer and changes what they are wearing. Pick by which part of the shot you want to survive.

Does this use credits?

Yes. A swap is a Viralkey Studio generation and spends credits like the other studio tools. Video costs more than a still because it runs on a video model and is billed per second.

Can I swap in a real, identifiable person?

Only where you have the right to. Use references of yourself, of a character you created, or of someone who has agreed to it. Putting a real person into footage they were never in is exactly the kind of use we ask you not to make of this tool.

AI Character Swap

Keep the footage. Change who is in it. Upload your video and one photo of the replacement character — the camera move, the lighting and every beat of the original motion stay exactly where they were.

AI Character Swap

Your video

The footage with the character to replace. If it cuts between shots, we use its longest continuous take. Images work too — an image scene returns an image.

Replacement character

Photos of who takes their place — up to 13. More angles hold the face steadier across frames.

Describe your idea

Swap scope

Style

How it works

History

AI Character Swap

Upload your video

The footage containing the character you want to replace. Its framing, camera movement, lighting and timing are what the result keeps. A still image works here too.

Add the replacement character

One or more photos of who takes their place. More angles hold the face steadier across frames. Add a line of description if there is something the photos do not say.

Pick the scope, then generate

Whole character, face only or outfit only, plus how the result should be rendered. Generate, and the finished clip lands in your library ready to download.

Reshooting Is the Expensive Part

The take is usually fine. The camera move works, the light is right, the performance lands. What has changed is who should be in frame — and that alone sends most productions back to the shoot.

The footage is the work; the character is the variable

A shot carries a lot of decisions and a lot of hours: where the camera goes, how it moves, how the light falls, how the performance is timed. Generating a new clip from a prompt throws all of that away to change one thing. Replacing the character inside the footage keeps every decision you already made and changes only the one you wanted to change. That is the difference between an edit and a reshoot.

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This is not motion transfer, and the difference matters

Motion transfer takes the movement out of a reference clip and applies it to a character in a scene the model invents. Character swap does the opposite: the scene is yours and stays untouched, and only the person changes. If you want your character doing someone else's choreography in a new environment, that is a different tool. If you want your existing footage with a different lead in it, this is the one.

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Everything You Need to Swap a Character

One video, one character photo, and a choice about how much of the replacement comes across.

Video in, video out — the shot never moves

Upload the clip and the result comes back as the same clip with a different person in it. Camera movement, background, lighting, framing and the original performance's timing are all held. The character is tracked frame by frame so the identity does not drift halfway through, which is the failure mode that makes most swapped footage unusable after the first second.

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Still scenes go through the same door

Drop an image into the same slot and you get an image back, edited rather than regenerated. You never pick a mode — what you uploaded already decided it, and the settings panel updates to match. Video scenes run on a video model with their own length and resolution options; still scenes run on an image model at full editing resolution.

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Choose how much of the replacement comes across

Whole character takes the face, hair, build and clothing from your reference. Face only keeps the original body and everything they were wearing or holding — the right choice when the wardrobe belongs to the shoot. Outfit only goes the other way and dresses the original performer in the reference's clothing. These are genuinely different jobs, and collapsing them into one default does all three badly.

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Identity from photos, not from a description

Text can describe a look; it cannot pin a face across two hundred frames. The replacement is built from the photos you upload, and that reference set is what keeps the character recognisable from the first frame to the last. The instruction to hold the face, hair and build is sent alongside the images rather than left implicit, because in practice the pictures alone are not enough.

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More ways to build your character

Design the character first, then put them into any footage you have.

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Built for Work That Repeats

Swapping earns its keep wherever the same character has to appear again, in footage that already exists.

For creators building a recurring character

A persona only reads as a persona if it survives the post, the thumbnail and the video and still looks like one person. Shooting each new piece and hoping the face matches is the slow way to lose that. Reusing one reference set across every clip means the character stays anchored to something you decided rather than to whatever came out of the last generation.

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For music videos and performance footage

You have a take you like and a lead who is no longer available, or a look that changed between the shoot and the release. Replacing the performer inside the cut keeps the choreography, the edit and the sync you already locked, instead of putting the whole day back on the schedule.

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For concept artists testing variations

Trying six versions of a character in the same shot is a comparison worth having, and it only works if the shot does not move between versions. Holding the footage constant makes the differences legible: what changed is the character, not the lighting, not the crop, not the camera.

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For adapting work across campaigns

The same spot with a different face is a routine ask and an expensive one when it means a reshoot. Swapping the character keeps the cut that was already approved and changes only the part that needed to change.

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What creators say

Notes from creators who used this tool on real work.

Lincoln Fairbanks

Short-form director

I had the take.

What I did not have was the budget to shoot it again with a different lead. Same footage, different character, done in a minute.

Rafaela Jimenez

Editor

The face held for the whole clip.

Everything else I tried drifted after about a second and then it was just noise.

Kenji Tanaka

Content creator

Dropping a video in and getting a video back — no mode picker, no second tool — is a smaller thing than it sounds and I noticed it immediately.

Fallon Thatcher

Costume designer

Face only was the option I did not know I wanted.

The costume was the point of the shot; the person wearing it was not.

Manuela Barrios

Concept artist

Six versions of the same character in the same shot, and because the shot never moved I could actually tell them apart.

Daisuke Kobayashi

Motion designer

It told me a video takes fewer reference photos before I generated, not after it failed.

Small thing, saved me a round.

Clive Vandermeer

Retoucher

The lighting matched.

That is the part everything else got wrong — the new face always looked pasted on top of the footage.

Alden Bramble

Virtual influencer

I keep one folder of reference shots for my character and every clip now starts from it.

The face stopped drifting.

Ingram Bradshaw

Agency producer

Swapping into an approved cut meant I did not have to get the cut approved twice.

That is the actual saving.

Frequently asked questions

It replaces the character in a video with a different one, taken from reference photos you upload, while the rest of the footage stays as it was — framing, background, lighting, camera movement and the original performance's motion.

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AI Character Swap

Reshooting Is the Expensive Part

The footage is the work; the character is the variable

This is not motion transfer, and the difference matters

Everything You Need to Swap a Character