Friday, June 14, 2019

Deepfake AI

Interesting article on Samsung's deepfake AI that could fabricate a video of you from a single photograph.

While the article highlights some of the negative potential for the technology (like inserting your ex's face into explicit "revenge porn") I kept thinking of a very positive potential application.

Remember the portraits in Howarts in the Harry Potter universe? Paintings that seemed alive? Can you imagine a classroom in the not to distant future where say a physics class is lined with the photos of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking and other physics greats?

These portraits could combine this deepfake AI with true AI where the portraits are loaded with all of the works of the person they show. In addition the data of where more modern science has either disproved or enhanced their ideas can be added. The teacher could ask "Sir Isaac could you explain your theory of gravity?" and the painting could come alive with an explanation. Then the teacher could follow-up by asking Sir Isaac how his theory differs from Einstein's. How cool would that be?

In the cases of more modern folks like Einstein and Feynman where we have recordings of their actual voices it may be possible for the "paintings" to even adopt many of the characteristics and mannerisms of those they portray.

Like Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We may be getting close to that point here.

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