ATT research has an animation technique that they have adpoted to something they call playmail. In which you can upload a picture of yourself, allow them to digitize and animate the pic and you can send e-mail of your disembodied head talking (user registration is required).
Facemail, or Playmail is based upon theirfacial animation project and they are licensing the technology. Modeled in MPEG-4, the technology (to me) has great implications for e-mail and instant messaging. The site looks kind of out of date and I’m not sure how far they’ve progressed since. But, your skepticism will disappear when you look at the demos. Especially the photo-real demos. Wow.