Deepfakes could anonymize people in videos while keeping their personality
AI could generate faces that match the expressions of anonymous subjects to grant them privacy—without losing their ability to express themselves.
The news: A new technique uses generative adversarial networks (GAN), the algorithm behind deepfakes, to anonymize someone in a photo or video.
How it works: The algorithm extracts information about the person’s facial expression by finding the position of their eyes, ears, shoulders, and nose. It then uses a GAN, trained on a database of 1.5 million face images, to create an entirely new face with the same expression and blends it into the original photo, retaining the same background.
Why am I always the bad guy?: Face anonymization is typically used to protect the identity of people such as whistleblowers, in photos and footage. This technique would make it far safer for them and also allow them to convey their personality when speaking. It also demonstrates a new value proposition for GANs, which have developed a bit of a bad reputation.