SYLVIA McKEOWN: With AI, what you see is not at all what you think you’re getting
It’s not just celebrities who are concerned about the dangers of face-swapping technology
They say seeing is believing. But what if everything you were seeing wasn’t real and even machines were having a hard time figuring out if it was? Clips have come online where Steve Buscemi’s face is superimposed on Sharon Stone’s as she utters the iconic words and stretches her legs over the chair in Basic Instinct. It looks awkward yet very realistic. But of course the use of this technology is not as innocent and amusing as it seems. It all started with a Reddit user called Deepfakes, who was obsessed with wanting to watch porn featuring Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot. So he made his own, by creating software that would essentially superimpose her face seamlessly on to that of a porn actress. The realism he was able to achieve caused the video and the tech to become an overnight sensation.
He then uploaded the tech for free and it went on to "face swap" numerous celebrities’ faces onto those of porn stars. Two months later easy-to-use apps, such as Fakeapp, started popping ...
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