Magic mirrors aren’t called “magic” for nothing. The images they produce that seem to float in mid-air are beautiful and captivating. But, for the most part, these mirrors are fairly standard: put the day’s weather forecast down in the corner, and maybe some calendar items or email summaries on the other side. Where is the magic in that? Do I really need my calendar floating in front of me pestering me about all the things I need to do that day?

YouTuber Concept Bytes saw a lot more potential in magic mirrors than that. Inspired by Magic Mirror from the movie Shrek, he decided to build an interactive character into a mirror. With the rise of large language models, it is now actually possible to build a real Magic Mirror — snark and all.

The brains of the operation (📷: Concept Bytes)

The build started with a piece of glass called a one-way mirror that allows something like 15% of light sources behind it to pass through. That keeps hardware hidden, but allows bright light sources, like an LCD to pass through. A frame was built around the glass, and a computer monitor was hidden inside. A huge 3D-printed backing was attached to the rear to prevent ambient sources of light from shining inside, which would ruin the illusion.

A Raspberry Pi single-board computer was chosen to serve as the brains of the magic mirror. Software called Blendshapes was leveraged to create a 3D model of a head and move it in a realistic way as it “speaks.” And to make it speak, the animation was connected to the ChatGPT API. The user’s speech is transcribed and sent to the model, and the responses are played though a speaker using a synthetic voice. Prompting adjusts the model’s behavior so that it reacts like the movie character, including the sass.

With a full-size monitor hidden behind a one-way mirror, you could build just about anything. What would you make if you had your own magic mirror?