Is Simon Cowell's surprising new face a vision of our deepfake future?
almost 5 years in The guardian
In the future, we might all embark on a side-slide not into younger, prettier people, but whole new personae
The human face, that subsection of appendages living just south of our eyebrows, has rarely been under such attack. Take the Bill Hader deepfake video that went viral this month, in which the comedian does impressions of Tom Cruise and Seth Rogan, and seems to morph into each of them as he goes.
“Deepfake?” you say. “Is that one of those Radio 1 Big Weekend artists who sound like bees attacking a Securicor van?” No, it’s much, much worse than that. Deepfake is artificial-intelligence-based human image synthesis. It robs the essence of your face and plasters it on to someone else’s. Not the whole thing; it’s no clumsy cut-and-shut job. Deepfake skims the very magic of you: the way your eyes narrow as you reach for a word; the angle at which your tongue skims your teeth as you inhale; the precise way your nostrils flare as you reach a punchline. Your unique one-in-7.53 billion human face. It extracts these things, plasters them on to someone else’s body and causes havoc. Continue reading...
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