Real-time virtual puppeting has been done in movies/television and research for a while now and yes, it can easily fool people.
A professor friend of mine Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford actually uses the Kinect to track facial movements and uses 3D models of others to create puppets in real-time. Even more interesting, he can morph your face with the person you're video conferencing with to create a feeling of commonality in them.
He actually wrote a book on it called Infinite Reality [1] which talks about all kinds of ways people will probably get manipulated in the future. He talks about things like mirroring movements (which he can do automatically in a video conference), looking into the eyes of every participant in a group video conference and other really interesting psychological hacks.
A professor friend of mine Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford actually uses the Kinect to track facial movements and uses 3D models of others to create puppets in real-time. Even more interesting, he can morph your face with the person you're video conferencing with to create a feeling of commonality in them.
He actually wrote a book on it called Infinite Reality [1] which talks about all kinds of ways people will probably get manipulated in the future. He talks about things like mirroring movements (which he can do automatically in a video conference), looking into the eyes of every participant in a group video conference and other really interesting psychological hacks.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Reality-Avatars-Eternal-Revol...