Recent developments made me think. Do we really own our face?
The first footage I saw that made me and many others think that in the future it might be very difficult to recognize which news are fake and which are not was this one:
If the results are very realistic right now imagine how it will be in a year or two. The video was from Summer 2017. And then late December a Reddit user by the name of "deepfakes" used technologies such as TensorFlow which is an open-source machine learning framework combined with Google Image Search and Youtube videos and good CUDA enabled Nvidia GPU cards (cause the process is really intensive) to create fake porn videos.
Credit: Clip from Gal Gadot fake porn video
Through the results are lifelike there is space for improvement, considering this is only the beginning. The subreddit Deepfakes that the fake porn clips were posted was banned and soon after that Twitter, Discord, Gfycat and PornHub also banned fake porn videos. You can see "safe for work" deepfakes videos in another subreddit (mostly Nicolas Cage face clipped in other movies).
After that apps like the FakeApp started to popout, which may produce fun projects but the real "danger" here is what professionals can do with these technologies.
Imagine world leaders announcing fake news, creating propaganda or malicious scam attempts with videos to make it seem more real. A few weeks ago, a fake Twitter account of Vitalik Buterin, asked for a donation of Ether and many people were scammed into believing it was him. How many more people might be believing it if there was a video of him speaking and asking for donations?
First of all, anything can be done with permission. Hollywood already uses similar technologies either to age or make actors look younger (like the Princess Leia Rogue One) or even use an actor that isn't alive anymore. The last one created controversy issues about the ethics of recreating the likeness of a dead actor. There doesn't seem to be any law against it.
Credit: Grand Moff Tarkin on Rogue One
In a more serious matter, there are laws against revenge porn videos. But how about fake revenge porn videos? Is it the same? Do same laws apply?
Of course, the law is always behind new and emerged technology matters as is this case. As of now, sites can ban fake porn videos/images if they want but there isn't any single law that forbid the creation of fake pornographic videos.
The only way a victim can protect himself/herself is by claiming a defamation. However, this can take time and may be hard to win in the court of law, and getting the content removed from the internet wouldn't only be hard but it could be a violation of the First Amendment (free speech).
Third party websites also can ban for content but aren't responsible for what the users upload and can't be sued for that.
Credit: A deepfake of Daisy Ridley
Another main reason that defamation will be hard is that each video contains a minimum of 2 people. One of the person's body and one of the person's face. The body of usually an actress is from a film that the actress doesn't have a copyright to claim. This seems to be a really hard case for the lawmakers.
Beyond the hollywood movies and fake porn abilities, there are other things to consider. Fake news and propaganda could be even bigger with the help of this tech and if this become mainstream the opposite will be true too. Real videos may be disregarded as fake. President Trump already call many stories "fake news". Imagine if a video of him or his partners surface that show something illegal or not of his liking. He can call it "deepfake" and carry on doing whatever he wants to do.
It started with a simple question in my mind and it expanded beyond that. What are your thoughts on this? Do we really own our face/image/likeness? Can we prevent unauthorized fakes of ourselves?
Have a great week! - Chris Myll
