Category: AI

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An AI machine given 8,000 cats’ names…

An AI machine given 8,000 cats’ names and then instructed to come up with its own suggested the following: Cheesemonger, Lilith the Vamp, Mr. Sinister, This Guy, Funky Moe and You’re Telling A Lie. For more AI Weirdness, head over to aiweirdness.com.

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Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity

Deepfakes are pretty creepy, if we’re being honest. Though they don’t seem to be especially helpful to anyone, deepfakes nonetheless look like they’ll be around for awhile.

Now, it’s easier than ever to produce your own deepfake (yay) with an app called Zao, created by Chinese developer MoMo.

According to Insider, the app topped Chinese iOS download charts after its recent unleashing.

If you didn’t know, deepfakes are bizarrely realistic CGI videos created by an algorithm. Deepfakes can be silly, like putting Nick Offerman’s face on every character in the Full House opening credits. But the scary thing about deepfakes is that they could also be used to falsify the words or deeds of an innocent person.

Now, with the touch of a button.

On your phone…

Indie game developer, Allan Xia, created a video of  a deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his movies. He shared the video to Twitter, where it quickly went viral because of how realistic it was. The program read one photo of Xia and paired it with DiCaprio’s facial expressions and mouth movements. Xia noted he only needed one image of himself and about eight seconds to create the deepfake.

Despite Xia’s achievement with the app, he also noted its potential dangers.

Is the intent purely to entertain?

Will it be used to bombard us with images of ourselves for marketing purposes?

Others on Twitter posted deepfakes of themselves as cast members of TV shows and movies.

The app’s developer, MoMo, is also a large social media platform in China. They have already been banned on WeChat due to a line buried in their usage terms that retains “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” access to all content it is used to generate.

So, they can own your face.

China’s expansive surveillance network already uses manipulated images of people, for which it has received criticism from both inside and outside the country.

Thankfully, you must have a Chinese phone number to download Zao, and if you don’t live in China, Zao having ownership of your face is not necessarily going to mean anything practical to you. After all, Facebook can use any of the content you’ve uploaded for whatever they want, too.

Xia has been microblogging about the app and disturbing impacts, both real and imagined on Twitter.

The future, it turns out, is creepy.

The post Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity

Deepfakes are pretty creepy, if we’re being honest. Though they don’t seem to be especially helpful to anyone, deepfakes nonetheless look like they’ll be around for awhile.

Now, it’s easier than ever to produce your own deepfake (yay) with an app called Zao, created by Chinese developer MoMo.

According to Insider, the app topped Chinese iOS download charts after its recent unleashing.

If you didn’t know, deepfakes are bizarrely realistic CGI videos created by an algorithm. Deepfakes can be silly, like putting Nick Offerman’s face on every character in the Full House opening credits. But the scary thing about deepfakes is that they could also be used to falsify the words or deeds of an innocent person.

Now, with the touch of a button.

On your phone…

Indie game developer, Allan Xia, created a video of  a deepfake of himself as Leonardo DiCaprio in some of his movies. He shared the video to Twitter, where it quickly went viral because of how realistic it was. The program read one photo of Xia and paired it with DiCaprio’s facial expressions and mouth movements. Xia noted he only needed one image of himself and about eight seconds to create the deepfake.

Despite Xia’s achievement with the app, he also noted its potential dangers.

Is the intent purely to entertain?

Will it be used to bombard us with images of ourselves for marketing purposes?

Others on Twitter posted deepfakes of themselves as cast members of TV shows and movies.

The app’s developer, MoMo, is also a large social media platform in China. They have already been banned on WeChat due to a line buried in their usage terms that retains “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” access to all content it is used to generate.

So, they can own your face.

China’s expansive surveillance network already uses manipulated images of people, for which it has received criticism from both inside and outside the country.

Thankfully, you must have a Chinese phone number to download Zao, and if you don’t live in China, Zao having ownership of your face is not necessarily going to mean anything practical to you. After all, Facebook can use any of the content you’ve uploaded for whatever they want, too.

Xia has been microblogging about the app and disturbing impacts, both real and imagined on Twitter.

The future, it turns out, is creepy.

The post Zao Is a Deepfake App That Snaps Your Photo and Makes You a Celebrity appeared first on UberFacts.

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The Deepfake Video of Bill Hader Impersonating Tom Cruise Is, Quite Frankly, Pretty Concerning

These Deepfake videos are kind of terrifying.

Deepfake is an AI technology that people on the web are using to produce new, or alter existing, video content in order to make it look as if something that didn’t occur actually did (kind of scary, if you ask me). The videos are created using two competing AI systems that learn from each other, each time creating a more convincing version for the next time.

There has been a recent rise in both the number and quality of deepfakes online, and it’s concerning for a number of reasons – but perhaps none is so starkly arresting as this clip of Bill Hader talking about Tropic Thunder on a 2008 episode of David Letterman.

Image Credit: YouTube

As he speaks about the film, his face starts to transform into Tom Cruise’s mug.

Image Credit: YouTube

It’s so subtle at first that you hardly notice, even when it flickers to Seth Rogen’s face for an impression, and then back again.

Image Credit: YouTube

You really have to watch it for yourself.

If nothing else, the clip shows how the technology is improving, and how easily it will allow misinformation to spread to the public.

AI is the wave of the future, but it remains to be seen whether or not humans can really be trusted with it.

The post The Deepfake Video of Bill Hader Impersonating Tom Cruise Is, Quite Frankly, Pretty Concerning appeared first on UberFacts.

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The Chinese government has…

The Chinese government has an AI survelliance system that uses +20M cameras and facial recognition to track citizens behavior and monitor criminals. They officially named it: “Skynet” – because of Terminator.