The media has started using deep fakes instead of mosaics, and what it means.

【British public broadcaster BBC uses “face-swapping AI” in documentaries to hide the identities of its sources】
https://gigazine.net/news/20221125-bbc-documentary-face-swapping-ai/

 

BBC, the UK’s public broadcaster, has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to replace one activist’s face with another in order to hide the identity of an “activist participating in the Hong Kong protests” in a documentary program

・The creators say, “By using AI to swap faces, we can protect activists from persecution while accurately conveying their emotions by conveying their habits and facial expressions in a realistic manner.”

・The technique of using AI to replace the face of a specific person with that of another person is also known as “deep faking,” and has been a hot topic and issue since around 2017

 

These are the quotes from the article

 

 



 

Media use deep fakes instead of mosaics. If you change the way you communicate, the way you communicate will change.

 

Deep faking is simply a technique of replacing faces with computer graphics, but nowadays the quality is so high that it is impossible to distinguish them from the real thing.

 

The use of this technology in a documentary interview is novel, and I feel that it is a new wave of technology, which I found very interesting.

 

Until now, in cases like this, the face would be mosaicked or not shown. This is being replaced by deep fakes.

 

As mentioned above, it is true that it is easier to convey facial expressions and emotions than when faces are obscured by mosaics and other means.

 

but、

 

There is something called Melavian’s Law, isn’t there?

Melavian’s Law is a law that states that in communication, the content of what you say is important, but non-verbal information such as appearance is also important. To put it in more detail,

Visual information 55% (personal appearance, gestures, facial expressions, attitude, eye contact, etc.)
auditory information 38% (tone and volume of voice, greetings, language, etc.)
Other information 7% (content of conversation, etc.)

Thus, Melavian’s Law teaches the importance of the nonverbal element.

 

In other words, the content of what you say is important, of course, but appearance is very important.

 

To use a clichéd and extreme analogy,

A great man says, “Hard work is important.”

An ordinary person says, “Hard work is important.”

The two are different in the way they are conveyed to the listener. (even though the content is the same).

 

In other words, visual information about what kind of person is speaking and what they look like is a very important factor when communicating.

 

Therefore, I think that changing the way we communicate from mosaic to deep fakes, as we have done this time, is very significant.

 

Oddly enough, I think it is possible to manipulate impressions through deep fakes.

 

It’s no surprise,

If you change the way you communicate, the way you communicate will also change.

 

I believe this is the first media utilizing deep fakes, but there may be more such media in the future.

 

In this day and age of fast-paced, tremendous amounts of information, it is very difficult to grasp the essential content.

I am a little worried that this deep-fake case may make that trend even stronger.

 

But,

Even if the speaker’s face changes from one face to another in the media due to deep faking, we want to take a pure and dispassionate view of what was said without being influenced by it, as much as possible.

 

All this said, I am a little more alarmed that the media has started using deep fakes. (Of course, there is a good side to this, but this time I will focus on the worrisome side.)

 

See you then.

 

In real relationships, you can tell a lot from what a person is saying and doing (are their words and deeds consistent?), not just how they look. but not so in a screen, so it is really difficult to discern.

 

 

 

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *