https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/image
Reload for GAN-produced faces.
I thought about making one my talkgroup profile picture and I still feel so weird about it.
1 Like
An info link on the site goes to https://www.lyrn.ai/2018/12/26/a-style-based-generator-architecture-for-generative-adversarial-networks/
Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) are a relatively new concept in Machine Learning, introduced for the first time in 2014. Their goal is to synthesize artificial samples, such as images, that are indistinguishable from authentic images. A common example of a GAN application is to generate artificial face images by learning from a dataset of celebrity faces. While GAN images became more realistic over time, one of their main challenges is controlling their output, i.e. changing specific features such pose, face shape and hair style in an image of a face.
A new paper by NVIDIA, A Style-Based Generator Architecture for GANs (StyleGAN), presents a novel model which addresses this challenge. StyleGAN generates the artificial image gradually, starting from a very low resolution and continuing to a high resolution (1024Ă—1024). By modifying the input of each level separately, it controls the visual features that are expressed in that level, from coarse features (pose, face shape) to fine details (hair color), without affecting other levels.
This technique not only allows for a better understanding of the generated output, but also produces state-of-the-art results – high-res images that look more authentic than previously generated images.
Why?
I ask, because I can’t even describe why I feel weird about it. It seems like a loaded value in my brain about how much a face belongs to a person. It is kinda fundamental to how we think about communicating. And I can’t even get into eye contact… 
1 Like
Having been a mod for a little bit of time on an online dating site… I have to say all I can think about is abuse cases for this mess.
What’s the upsides besides hyperrealistic video games not based on human acotrs/models?
1 Like
Yeah, I kinda think that too, but I can’t come up with any solid abuses. I imagine people hold meaningful relationships online somewhat based on profile pics, but it is difficult for me to understand being tricked by this. As in, I am already so distrustful and proactively defensive, I wouldn’t use a dating or other site to communicate with someone if I wasn’t either going to verify in person or was okay not being able to. I feel kinda embarrassed to share that, but I’ll own: dating sites were never in the cards for me, my childhood prohibits me from trusting people in that way.
Here’s a funny thing: I’ve never met or heard @trashHeap! But I consider em a precious and trusted friend. That’s because it is based on communication over time. If we had met on a dating site, I’d gotten on video chat very early (and would have decided to go forward depending on tech stack chosen; it says you are IT right in your profile, don’t bring that Skype nonsense! 
). If Wes doesn’t look like the pic, e is at least very consistent, a trait I appreciate in folks. 
And it is possible e doesn’t look like that, I suspect they are many, hence needing so many social networks and distros and game consoles and…
Okay, back to fakces (fake faces, isn’t pronounced how it looks! Any takers?): please list out abuses of this tech like I’m five, I’m curious.
On the flipside… some of those are freaky weird! Just normal enough to pass as human, but something is kinda off, so… how great would that be for a BBS-style visual novel or game thing?! Or make a retro-website with low-res pics of all these freaky people! Or assign one at random to the player! Like Rust, but with less Steam (so like, metal?). 
A lot of catfishing in general takes place because people are vulnerable or have cognitive blinders on in someway. Catfish victims are often very old, or fairly young, or very desperate after suffering lots of unlucky rolls of dice, or are on the rebound and are emotionally vulneable.
My point being this doesn’t make the victims any more or less in danger. Their likely to fall into such traps regardless if this technology exists or not. Their predisposed to fall for people without ever seeing realtime video, and do them favors to keep the relationship going. They may ask for it, but the con-artist hear will have an endless supply of seemingly reasonable excuses.
People creating online profiles in order to catfish though often use stock art, or pictures lifted from other human’s profiles. Usually to flesh out an online dating profile, you need numerous images all of the same individual. (Or individuals who look close enough to look like the same within error bounds) Mods often track down the origins of such images in order to identify fake accounts on dating websites and therefore minimize the number of toxic predators in their communities. And Mods can’t really ask for or demand for realtime communitation to audit users. As the number of reports coming in is often a high rate.
1 Like
when does the lease on “faxes” expire
I’d imagine that at scale, abuse cases of made up faces arise through interaction, much like the various subreddits and other online spaces that get inflated by eg. state-sponsored trolls. If you can provide a little more credibility to a whole bunch of fake people with more fake faces, people might be that much more willing to invest in the ideas your fake personas are posting.
Of course, this specific implementation alone can’t make multiple convincing images of the same person. Maybe someone else’s can tho 
As for upsides… stock photos 
me! i’m a taker! but i’m pronouncing it “FAKE-ses,” as in what gollum calls a bunch of fake things.
1 Like
It seems likely that falls out of this. If their algorythms can be trained to generate random faces, im sure they could be trained to generate faces along a theme.
It wouldn’t be hard to chain this together with other existing technologies to get a poor man’s brute force version of that either.
- Generate a couple hundred faces. Just so you have a selection to choose from.
- Pick a target. Keep it as X
- Use X as the source image for a facial matching algorithm, the kind Facebook uses, or what various megacorps sell to police.
- Define number of needed pictures. Record as n.
- Generate a new random photo. Use facial matching algorithm to see if it looks like X. If not discard. If yes add it to the queue.
- If queue < n go back to step 5.
2 Likes
My first thought, which I kept to myself, was if one could choose colors for various things. Its like making that color poster in Community, where Dean and Pierce refer to coffee, I think one orders a Seal, and another puts in cream to make a Tilda Swinton…
I think I don’t need to personally spend time thinking about generating not-real people. I have a for-person to generate, and now I have to go figure out how to explain whatever GAN is to them (eventually)…
1 Like