An interesting use could be to anonymise people in public videos. You could use randomly generated faces (which other emerging tech can produce) and effectively remove peoples recognizable features by "replacing" them.
Politicians and celebrities are all about their faces. They wouldn't allow for anonymizing their footage even though the 'bad' guys will want to exactly use their faces on fake videos for exactly the same reasons.
Storytelling of historical characters where we have common knowledge of what they looked like (e.g. Einstein).
Reshooting scenes of movies without having to get key actors back on location.
Immersive storytelling where you get to be placed inside a movie.
Actor safety where they can go through transformations for a shoot, such as extreme weight loss or weight gain.
I can really only think of it in terms of entertainment. There may be some therapy benefits which are yet to get discovered, but I would imagine that's a whole new level of complexity.
This concept is literally used in the Ghost in the Shell manga, often for comedic purposes. There's one funny set of panels where a character is shown in a video-chat window as neat-and-tidy and wearing a nice business suit, but is shown in a subsequent panel as videochatting while she's on the toilet in messy hair and a tank-top.
You have it reversed. If it is already true that being more symmetrical, imposing and pleasing is advantageous for negotiations, then the future in which we have the tools to counter that bias is getting less sad.
You can make a similar argument that the wide availability of soaps and deodorants reinforces biases about how people should smell. While that's true, the fact that anyone can easily match those biases reduces the opportunity to discriminate and makes those biases less of an issue.
You can make that argument, yes. I can deconstruct it by arguing that not everyone can easily match those biases - I bet there are still plenty of places on Earth where soap is surprisingly difficult to come by.
That side issue does not have much to do with the video issues under discussion, though.
I shudder at the thought of a world in which always-on lies about your appearance become standard practice.
Have physical reality and truth really become irrelevant?
They have been for quite some time: Cosmetic Surgery.
I remember watching a TV show years ago about a woman who had had lots of plastic surgery, found the man of her dreams, and was now pregnant. She was afraid the baby would come out looking totally different than she did, because she had physically changed herself so much, and her husband would leave her over the deceit.
At the same time, with cosmetic surgery, you are changing physical reality. Someone has sliced up your body and reconfigured it to be more what you want.
So it's not necessarily a "lie", as such.
Like I said, though, I see what you're getting at, and it's a valid point.
Since this has gotten to the point where we need to be precise with the language: they are not the tools for eliminating the existence of bias. They are tools for countering the effect of bias in particular instances.
I think you missed your parent's point. Let's examine a related case: fashion models. The industry has been manipulating images for years, to make models skinnier, whiter, removing blemishes, etc. In your language, these are tools for eliminating the effect of bias for the models. The impact that's had on our society is well studied: biases have been disastrously reinforced.
Ha! People who wear power suits, makeup, expensive haircuts and shoes are already doing all this. Technology just means you don't have to spend time in the stylist's chair to accomplish it any more!
And what percentage of the population do you believe that is true for? Remember, we're talking about people interviewing in general here, not the small percentage of software devs who work 100% remotely on contract.
Not to mention you'll just come off as a huge weirdo as soon as you're found out.
It's not a straw man when your case applies to a tiny fraction of the human population and mine applies to the rest. Context matters, I was responding to this:
>Ha! People who wear power suits, makeup, expensive haircuts and shoes are already doing all this. Technology just means you don't have to spend time in the stylist's chair to accomplish it any more!
* See what you look like in a certain outfit being put through its paces. A stock video of a bride walking down the aisle or dancing in a dress could have the real bride's face put in place so the bride can visualize how she'll look in different situations.
* A demo video of what life in a new house would be like. Pre-recorded video featuring actors waking up, eating breakfast, and living life in a home could have the actors replaced with the potential home buyers.
* Security tests... for facilities that have to look for "banned" people, occasionally a face could be replaced on the video to see if the security guard notices. This is similar to the TSA sometimes testing workers by putting in fake images of guns or bombs into the X-Ray display to make sure their workers are actually paying attention.
* Retroactively correcting visual media that is no longer appropriate. I would love a version of "The Cosby Show" where Bill Cosby was replaced by another famous black actor just because it would trigger my liberal guilt less. This could allow studios to craft contracts where if a star committed a grievous act or if they die, their likeness could be replaced throughout the series and they would stop receiving royalties for their visual appearance. Dialog could be re-dubbed as well to complete the retroactive continuity.
* Updating low-res video... If there is a very poor and grainy interview with someone, the image might be able to be enhanced more completely by replacing the subjects face with a higher resolution copy of their own face!
* Smart therapy mirrors... people who have had disfigurements or have body image problems could have a smart mirror that displays a modified image for either self-esteem purposes or to help them psychologically.
* Same applies for funhouse/haunted house mirrors... seeing a mirror image of yourself with a zombie-ified head would be a great illusion.
* Real-world facial masking... You know how people can 3d map the exterior of a building and then project an image onto it using that 3d map taken into account to pull off some spectacular illusions? [1]
Something similar, sans holographic technology, could be done to make someone appear like someone else. A camera and 3d scanner environment to track the facial contours and location, with a projector projecting the image of another face onto the real face. Similar to the scene in Bladerunner 2049 where the AI girlfriend rents a real-world avatar for a personal encounter with her boyfriend. [2]
“Joke” apps, so you can put yourself in a video as a hero heroine, villain villainess. Put yourself as a singer or whatever on a music video, etc.
Punking your friends too.
In a productive context in filmmaking you can have fun with doubles and stuntmen and stunt women. Or if you have the rights to license the face and likeness of an actor actress and they can be in five films, ten films in a year (forgetting about brand dilution). John Wayne can be in a new Western movie,
He posted a ton of video examples if you scroll down thread on Twitter, and some are better than others. It's shocking how accessible the technology is now that a phone app is letting you do faceswaps on short video clips with one picture and basically no effort on the part of the user.
Famous actors could license their face for use. This could even last past their death, allowing them to star in movies decades after their flesh death.
If an actor dies while filming a movie, it can be required in the contract that they allow their face to be generated for scenes that haven't been filmed yet.
They could also use this to use a younger face as they age.
Doing exactly this, replacing stunt doubles, is what I wrote and acquired a global patent back in '08. I tried to create a personalized advertising agency: put people into the advertisements themselves, driving the new car, wearing the new fashions, taking the luxury vacation. Problem was, I started my effort in '04, had a working pipeline by '08 - but none believed it was possible. Even when I'd demonstrate right in front of them, investors thought it was a trick. I eventually went bankrupt and quit. Today, we have deepfakes, where we could have had personalized adverting a decade ago.
I see a lot of concern regarding fake pornographic videos. And I get it. But on the other hand, people could release videos they do not want to appear in with a credible alternative to blurring faces (though I guess you could still fingerprint facial expressions).
If this gets mainstream enough, "revenge porn" would also lose a lot of its current value, being easily dismissible as "fake". (And so would genuine photographical evidence...)
Journalists could use it to hide their sources from the public. If this gets reaaly good, it would become a nice alternative to motion capture for cinematography (pose estimation, including facial expressions). Then swap in the 3D model, or concept art of the person you want to appear on screen. Significantly reduce the costs for makeup, and enable more in post-prod. That was probably already available for big teams with big budgets, but this makes it more mainstream.
I recently watched a Deep Fake video of The Shining with Jim Carrey's face over Jack Nicholson's. It was so damn good you couldn't even tell it wasn't actually him playing the role. This was all fun and games, but one thing that immediately comes to mind is movies staring people who are no longer alive.
I’ve been telling people that there will now always be new movies with Tom Hanks. Even after he has passed, there’s so much screen time to use and audio recordings that he could forever be in new movies.
Privacy. A commercial video shot in public today is usually required to blur faces of people who didn't give explicit consent. Replacing faces with stubs is a nice alternative, as long as the target face is from a person with a consent.
> Replacing faces with stubs is a nice alternative, as long as the target face is from a person with a consent.
Why use a real face? You could generate a fake one using a GAN. You may even be able to build a fully automatic anonymize tool that can identify the broad characteristics of each face present (skin tone, age, male/female etc) then use that to generate replacement faces.
On a network like FB that has your photos, mix your own face into the advertisement! The video can have the pre-computed target, and the network can generate yours from all that free photo storage/tagging...
As a part of a pro movie making suite like AfterEffects or DaVinci Resolve - you can take somebody else to act in a scene and then replace with physique of your chosen actor, e.g. you do stunts, your actor can't appear at a given geographic location at a given time, somebody had a facial injury/scars you want to get rid of etc. Plenty of valid uses. Then you could e.g. do a render in Blender and replace "avatars" with real human faces, avoiding "uncanny valley" in your animation.
Travel industry can have uses as well - these days many places offer video recordings of their clients doing some dangerous activity; for those that can't do them yet still want the video they could offer pre-baked scenes where taking a selfie could kill somebody and then replace their face/body with some green screen footage of their client using this app and some pose estimator/body switcher. Or just show you how much would you enjoy some beach property in some hot location with a video featuring you etc. This would make it useful for custom ads featuring you as well.
Localisation of films\tv shows\educational material.
Often English language films are poorly dubbed for local (mostly non-English speaking) markets. Having a local/recognisable actor filling the role would be a big improvment.
That’s a little more complicated. Now you’re replacing a face and body and either having them voice dialogue separately (dubbing themselves) or you’re putting a local face to a foreign film (and subbing?)
I can see them modifying the actual original actor to speak in a local language however to sync with the localized dialogue.
That said, your proposition is also interesting. It raises some questions though. Imagine an indie French film where the protagonist (or whoever) gets replaced by a Hollywood actor. Or an indie Angolan film which gets the treatment. There would be lots of purists (for many reasons) protesting this kind of option.
Celebrities could sell the 'rights' to their faces and then ordinary people could 'act' in commercials and later on even movies and then just stick the face of the celebrities?! xD Celebrities will become cheaply available to 'star' in your next Netflix series.
(But unfortunately, even if celebrities don't sell their faces, they'll be stolen!)
Deep analysis of the body for any visible signs of tumors or diseases. Stroke detection software. Home and car entry without needing to carry any keys. Much faster entry into airports, where we need passports or security checks anyway. Lots of entertainment possibilities.
Agree that this feels like a tool for malicious intent.
But, maybe reviving dead celebrities or family members?
Either way this tech seems inevitable, nerds showing off their skills to other nerds.
Next question: does it make CCTV footage obsolete as a form of permissible evidence in court?
If you had hardware that generated per frame signatures using PK encryption? Private keys and hardware can be compromised but at least it raises the bar and weeds out casually malicious actors. Having said that, I have no idea if such devices exist nor how they might work.
