You’d have to ask Kristine Attenborough.
Kristine is blowing up social media right now from her work on YouTube. It isn’t because of her stunning beauty. It’s because of her talent. At only 19 years old, she has baffled millions of people at how she’s able to play tricks with the mind in the videos she makes. Kristine is a DeepFake artist. She makes videos of people where the faces of famous actors are layered over other famous actors in iconic scenes. Seeing is believing.
Like this: You know what?
I think that Bruce Lee should have never been cast in The Matrix. His martial arts are amazing, but I don’t know… something just seems off.
I really wish they went with Keanu Reeves, instead. But he was busy doing Forrest Gump, which was sad and awkward with him in it. He does marvelously, but something just doesn’t feel quite right, either.
I can’t put my finger on it.
Maybe some laughs to take my mind off things. How about the amazing impressions of Bill Hader?
Yeah, that wasn’t creepy at all.
These are called “Deep Fakes”, and there exists a community online that just does this for a hobby. They can stitch in real people’s faces into places they never existed. It amounts to YouTube’s newest digital parlor trick, but has some obvious negative implications, such as perhaps being used to affect elections and world events with online rumors and other malicious content.
Again, what I find surprising is that these levels of realism are attained by hobbyists. Other answers have demonstrated how actors have been digitally replaced. Examples were Paul Walker, who died during filming and was replaced with CGI where his brothers played as stand-ins.
Other examples included Robert Downy Jr. in Iron Man 3 after sustaining an injury on set, or the use of the faces of Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing, after the two died. In the case of Cushing, this pushed the definition of the studio owning the rights to his image to very new and ethically questionable places for the film industry.
That said, resurrecting the dead is something that requires millions of dollars… for now. People like Kristine, however, are getting better every day with her video spoofs. What she’ll be able to do given some time, whether that’s make better movies or bring down regimes with faked propaganda, nobody knows.
Okay, so I lied, a little. Have you guessed it? Take a look at Kristine again. You know what’s special about her?
Kristine doesn’t exist. Her name comes from two friends and editors for the space I run War Elephant — Kristine Carlson and Carla Attenborough. Her backstory is true enough, for someone at least. There are real people who do the things I’ve said, but her face, the image I used to snag your attention, it’s completely fake. Her face is one of millions created instantly by the website: This Person Does Not Exist. You click on it, and an algorithm automatically creates the face of a human no one has ever seen before. It uses deep learning to create new faces from thousands of images to… I don’t know, help some programmer feel special. You can learn more about how it works here.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Many of you may have seen a recent answer by Rudy Triana where he lays out something most of us are completely unaware exists. There are now models that are insanely famous… who don’t even exist. One of these girls isn’t real.
The girl with the pink hair is named Imma. According to Rudy’s answer:
Imma is one of the most photogenic asian models blowing up social media. Her portfolio is diverse and she’s taking mainstream by storm as well as social media, with a current following of 76K followers on Instagram and rising.
No matter what lighting or camera, Imma manages to take flawless photos with ease. (Even in a selfie)
But Imma isn’t real.
Imma is of a handful of the new ‘Virtual Influencer ’ trends taking social media by storm. She was created by Tokyo-based CG company Modelling Cafe and recently graced the cover of CGWorld magazine.
Apparently, KFC wanted to get into the game too, by creating the single most pretentious human being never to exist. I honestly don’t know if they’re trying to be ironic here, but the uber-Millennial digital influencer trying to give people life advice from the wisdom and experience of an amazing life that never happened makes me want to gouge out my heart with a chicken bone.
But, there’s even more…
All the work put into digital deep fake videos requires a computer analyzing thousands of pictures, and creating fake photos of newly invented people requires thousands more. But researchers in Russia (oh jeez) have determined a way to animate life from only a single photo. Here’s Mona to show us more.
What does this tell me?
Forget CGI becoming so good that we can’t tell the difference between them and real life humans. We’ve past that. What we’re seeing is the birth of a new industry, people who don’t exist becoming the actors, becoming personalities in themselves, doing literally anything they’re told. Imagine, fake actors, and everyone knows it, but because of their popularity, they are requested for parts in movies again, and again, and again.
An entrepreneurial film studio might opt to invest a million dollars in inventing and promoting their own celeb personalities rather than pay the millions upon millions begging for their return in the sequel. Take this photo, dubbed “the most expensive shot in movie history” due to the extraordinary cumulative salaries paid to those who still comprise the Marvel Universe.
So much for being a famous Hollywood actor. Their high salaries might have just been what does them in. Soon, it might give a better ROI to make fakes, actors and actress who aren’t so finicky and prone to tantrums, mental breakdown, and drug use on set. They never ask for more and even get cheaper over time; they never ask for anything. They never even age, unless someone wants them to, forward or backward. And they’ll even be better actors, trained by the best turncoats willing to share their genius to the algorithm. Best of all, if they score it big, they can literally be used again and again, for every possible sequel or role they are desired for — forever! When production is done, someone can just hit save and put the genie back in the lamp. I’m not saying that actors will one day be replaced by digital representations of themselves. I’m saying they will be competing with digital personalities unique unto themselves… and far more preferable. Who would have known that actors thinking they’re gods will result in actually building digital gods to replace them.
And people won’t even care.
Now, I just need to be a little preachy to finish this one off.
As a teacher in a middle school classroom, I see one thing different for kids today that wasn’t a problem for me. I was the best at some things. I was better than all the other kids at my little role on the team, or my little hobby, or in a particular class I was interested in. Everyone was the best at a few things. But today, kids can pull up a YouTube video of a kid three years younger than them 10 times better than they will ever be… at the thing they are good at; the thing they’ve attached their identity to. It bugs me that kids no longer feel special because now they aren’t just competing against the other kids in their local area, but the most talented kids of their generation. It’s rough and a big part of why I think so many go down such dark roads, and yes, I think it contributes to the already alarming and forever increasing rates of teen suicide and even worse.
But then add in that in the future, they may be competing for self-esteem with people who don’t even exist. No, the woman below doesn’t exist either.
Talk about unreal standards of beauty.
Sorry to get all preachy and philosophical in a question about special effects, but after having a kid (a girl no less), and having worked with kids, it’s all just a little bit unnerving. This all feels like one of those pandora’s boxes that shouldn’t have been opened, but here we are and I’m not sure what we do with it or how we cope with trying to live up to the image of a person who isn’t a person.
Relaxed. Researched. Respectful. -
Thanks for Reading 🙏
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stolen from Quora
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