In the past few months we have talked about how videos and voices can be faked by emerging AI systems. Samsung has just released their latest innovation. A method for turning still photos into video. Titled “Living Portraits”, the program was developed by Samsung’s AI research group in Russia (what could go wrong with that? just don’t believe anything that you see in the next US election).
Here are several examples. There is a ton of film with Marilyn Monroe however this photo has been animated without reference to any of that film. It is easy to envisage how a nefarious actor could use this technology to develop a fake clip of Marilyn saying anything at all.
There has been a lot of debate over the past 500 years about who “Mona Lisa” actually was in life. The most credible identification is that she was Lisa Gheradini del Giocondo. A note in the margin of a record book kept by da Vinci stated that he was working on her portrait during the time of the painting’s creation. However we know little about her life other than she was married to a rich merchant. Now Samsung has brought that most famous of faces, back to life through AI.
Again, there is archival footage of Einstein however this Living Portrait brings one of the most famous photos of Einstein to life. In the future there will most likely be videos of Einstein explaining his most famous equations. It probably won’t be any easier for most of us to understand those equations and their implications, however it will be cute.
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Dalí de Púbol, better known as Salvador Dali was a famous Spanish surrealist painter. Given the style of his work, this animation of his photo would probably be considered tame.
As with much of this type of research. It has been created because we can. With a little imagination we can see commercial applications. If any of you are considering a career as an extra in advertisements or movies, you probably need to rethink that career. AI generated faces and video will be cheaper, quicker and more adaptable to specific situations than the traditional (or current) method of using real people in advertisements and movies.
Paying it Forward
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Till next week.