I'm the author of https://vo.codes, and my goal has been to make deep fakes as accessible as possible so people become familiar with them.
You know what people use vo.codes for? Memes. That's it.
A number of journalists have decided the technology is entirely confusing and deceitful. While there are new risks posed by deep fakes, I believe the potential for good far outweighs the bad. Today I see it being used mostly for artistic purposes and for humor. The real threat is social media and the soapbox amplification and attention algorithm, not deep fakes.
Deep fakes enable creatives to make this kind of stuff (most of these are made with vocodes) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSgd4PoQofQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBpqJF5LXX4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qR8I5zlMHs
https://twitter.com/RodanSpeedwagon/status/13172304947156213...
https://twitter.com/twpl_logan/status/1306542488694460416
vtubers are using it to give themselves new voices, which is amazing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCKcrSrPYcw
As the technology improves, it will become disruptive and enable average people to join the ranks of Hollywood actors, directors, music producers, and vocalists. The future isn't A-list celebrities and grammy winners, it's people like you and me.
The people stoking the anti-deepfake fire are the media. They claim that this is the end of trust and authenticity, despite the fact that classical methods of trickery and deceit are already way more common. Where are their doomsday articles about catfishing, phishing, and social engineering? There aren't any, because it isn't exciting.
This technology doesn't really move the needle for deception if you can slow a video of Nancy Pelosi to half speed and claim that she's drunk.
Deepfakes are just the next wave of photoshop. People don't use photoshop to steal elections and win court cases. They use it to make memes. It's the same deal with deepfakes.
The technology is going to improve. And I'm sure the hysteria will increase in volume too.
Real time voice conversion and video generation is going to be cited as "scary", but it'll mostly be a hit with gamers and vtubers. It's not going to be a "Mission Impossible"-style espionage tool. It's going to be used in good humor and to good effect.
These tools are going to bring about a new media renaissance. They'll let the small players compete with the giants. That's not scary - it's exciting.
That's also what I'm working on for my startup: memes today, hollywood / old media disruption tomorrow.
I've already got insane growth (millions of requests a week, and our videos have hundreds of thousands of YouTube views). I'm wondering when to pull the trigger and start hiring people. (My users are already working with me to build more!)
I'm super excited by this field, and you should be too. The media is screaming fire, but I'm running at it with full speed. I see the magic and the amazing opportunity.