A Deepfake Queen’s Speech is just the start



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A Deepfake Queen’s Speech is just the start

How Deepfakes and AI could start to become more common in the media we consume.

Channel 4’s Deepfake Queen’s Speech might be the start of a new way of making media (image courtesy of Channel 4).

As a brit, on Christmas Day I was quite happy to hear the call out for diversity and the nod to all those who have struggled through this year — especially those on the front line in key worker roles and in the NHS.

As a data scientist, I was very interested in seeing Channel 4’s alternative Queen’s Speech. As I’m sure many of you have, I’ve followed the GAN/Deepfake progress for a while now. This, however, was the first time we’d seen it on such a scale, on the TV.

It was well done, the imagery was of good enough quality at the start to highlight the power of these tools but an obvious call to trust and fake information sources — something especially important in the wake of COVID-19 vaccinations.

What’s next?

What interested me most though, was where this can go. I’ve been saying for a while now that this tech could lead to some significant changes in fields like advertising and media. This technology is still very young and as it becomes more sophisticated and cheaper/easier/faster to do, we might start seeing more widespread applications. My top predictions are below.

Photo by Riley on Unsplash

You’re the advert

Imagine scrolling through your favourite social media advert. You’re in the market for a new car, you’ve searched online a few times and spoken about it within earshot of your smart speaker. So you shouldn’t be surprised to see car adverts scoot past your feed.

What does catch your eye though is you — yes, it’s you — and your friends driving along, the top is down in some flashy sports car, you’re winding down a beautiful road in a country you’re certain you haven’t even been to.

Introducing Deepfake advertising. How much more eyecatching would an advert be if you and your friends were in it?

Marilyn Monroe starring in Fast and Furious 14

A lot is already done in films and TV using CGI and we’re all familiar with the tricks used to finish a film should the worst happen to a performer and they die during production.

But what if the performer was never there in the first place? Or what, in fact, if they died years before the film was even conceived?

Take Marilyn Monroe for example, there’s enough footage and voice recordings already to train a reasonably convincing model. The biggest question then, I guess, is are there any superstars whose brands are large enough to make their likeness immortal?

Or do we go a step further and generate performers that never actually existed in the first place?

The end of video evidence?

More in line with the spirit of what Channel 4 were saying, but what if this could spell the end of video as evidence? If you can Deepfake a video that gives you an alibi or shows the person you’re accusing caught in the act we’re in a dangerous place. There’s already an arms race going on here, with research going into how to detect these kinds of videos — this post by Adrian Yijie Xu has a good overview:

This leads us to a worrying future and I think Channel 4’s message of being careful of who you trust becomes even more important.

Conclusion

Deepfake technology is still very young. I think this could be the start of something that changes not only the way we produce media but also how we consume it.

For more discussion on the matter, this post by Steven Allison here is good:

And the criticism in the Guardian is also well worth a read here.

If you have strong thoughts on this or have any feedback, please let me know. You can catch me on:

AI/ML

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