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Comment by kefka_p | Hacker News Reader

Can anybody demonstrate a legitimate use of deepfake software? Has it ever been used to facilitate a socially positive or desirable outcome? While I recognize my experiences are far from definitive, I hazard most would be hard pressed to name anything positive that came out of deepfake technology.

edit: I’ll take your knee-jerk DV, and any others, as an admission of an inability to speak to positive utility of this technology.

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Edit: this comment is referring to deepfakes more broadly, and is not a commentary on the validity of the source linked here. I can't speak to the reputability of the community developing this, or how it has been used so far. -- I'm a fairly visual and imaginative person, and it's pretty easy for me to come up with some very useful applications. No hostility intended, genuinely sharing my thoughts:

1. CGI for video editing - lower the bar of entry to de-age actors, or use a stand-in. Actor can't make it to a shoot that day? No worries, replace their face in post easily.

2. Identity protection - Cold call with someone that reached out to you, you're not sure if they're safe or dangerous, could be a good way to protect yourself.

3. Social media content for clients - become a fake avatar for hire essentially, customize your narrator for any video or brand. Video call centers with fake video (they already have voice modifiers and fake names), Enhanced VTuber sort of things (virtual avatars for streaming).

4. Unexpected outcomes: for example Holly Herndon created (and sold) access to an AI replica of her singing voice (n1), and I could see artists selling or renting access to their faces.

Obviously this can and will be used maliciously, but I personally could see myself using it for more positive reasons.

n1. https://holly.mirror.xyz/54ds2IiOnvthjGFkokFCoaI4EabytH9xjAY...

First let me thank you for a thoughtful riposte! I do appreciate that. My question was an honest one and I imagine, not the easiest to conceive an answer to. I genuinely appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts.

With that said almost every use-case cited was financial or monetary gain whereas I enquired about social utility and value.

That dishonesty ie creation of a fake avatar is cited as being of social utility strikes me as a reach. I don’t see how adding more dishonesty and facades to the world adds social value, but then I may just be of limited imagination.

I would appreciate being able to morph my appearance and voice on video calls, into something more reflective of my identity (facial structure, hair color, cat ears) than the body I was provided by circumstances.

> every use-case cited was financial or monetary gain whereas I enquired about social utility and value.

Oh, right. I think the unfortunate answer is that nobody cares about that distinction any more and only about the former.

> With that said almost every use-case cited was financial or monetary gain whereas I enquired about social utility and value.

It could allow people to petition their government [0] without having someone bust down their door at 3am and disappear forever.

[0] Which is apparently important enough to have been included in the bill of rights

> It could allow people to petition their government [0] without having someone bust down their door at 3am and disappear forever.

Surely just wearing a mask - virtual or otherwise - does the job without the deep fakery?

No doubt, but they wanted a non-capitalistic reason why this technology isn’t The Debil.

And having subtle clues from watching a person’s face while they’re proposing whatever action to overthrow the patriarchy is more convincing than some random person wearing a Guy Fawkes mask talking about revolution for the umpteenth time.

Whoa, whoa, I never claimed the technology was the “debil”. I merely asked for examples of viable, moral, unique uses of this tech.

I think some socially positive use cases could be:

- Representing assistive robots/software with friendly human faces

- Reconstructing the likeness of people with permanent facial injuries when connecting with family

Other, questionably "legitimate", commercial uses are already in production:

- auto-generated corporate training videos

- "Personalized" advertising

I'm hating it already.

#2 sounds really interesting! I’m not sure of the psychological ramifications, but I can’t imagine they’d be different than any other sort of prosthesis save for an inability to actually touch it.

I could see it being used in AR to conceal identity to facilitate more equitable medical outcomes, I suppose.

Thank you again for the input! I was honestly at a loss for positive applications outside of financial gain.

I haven’t seen any ads driven by deepfake, or at least I don’t think I have. That advertising bit does sound rather obnoxious though!

Thanks for encouraging productive discussion! Your original question made me come up with #2 - I couldn't find active development on that specific concept, but I found something pretty amazing.

"Deepfake therapy" lets therapists simulate the presence of dead or non-cooperative people [1]. A study showed positive results when sexual violence victims could safely discuss with a deepfaked version of their abuser [2].

[1]: https://deeptherapy.ai/

[2]: Initial development of perpetrator confrontation using deepfake technology in victims with sexual violence-related PTSD and moral injury: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.8829...

As one example, Matt Stone and Trey Parker made a short movie (and tried to do a feature) with deep fake technology [0].

[0] https://collider.com/trey-parker-matt-stone-almost-made-sass...

That is pretty neat, any sort of art does add cultural and social utility to a degree. Thanks for the heads up, because just about every mention I’ve seen published on the topic is more or less a horror story. I wasn’t being facetious in my query. Thanks again for the input!

Sassy Justice is hilarious, I hope they do end up making more

What is the boundary between "deepfake" and "photoshop" (i.e. regular human "fake" or edit?)

I suspect it's going to become popular for both consensual-deepfake of oneself (PR, magazines, actors, pop stars, any form of public speaker) and "bought out" deepfake (actors selling out their image rights and then losing creative control; dead actors, etc.)

The political-deepfake is really going to accelerate the debate over how much free speech permits you to just lie about people, though.

The number of man hours that would be necessary to plausibly fake even a short film in Photoshop, if I had to guess. It strikes me as analogous to owning sidearms versus BMGs and rocket launchers. One of these tools makes doing bad things far easier.

Another analogy. Say somebody makes some hacking kit. Say it uses zero day exploits to compromise Windows, Mac, and Linux. Would any of us take issue with that? Would it be a different story if it was made into a push-button tool like WinNuke was in the 1990s? Or automated to the extent that somebody who can make a word doc could employ it against your systems? Is there really no feasible line of distinction here, in your eyes?

The social good of deepfake technology will be the destruction of the unwarranted power which has been given to image, and which the Internet has amplified.

Think about it: people choose to trust or not trust based on a face. When deepfaking becomes a tool easily available to every average joe, appearance will lose some of its power. People will learn to lose their irrational trust in face.

The technology isn't just deep fake, deep faking is one ability of techniques that do more general object/person replacement. It is such a small step between techniques for things like digital de-aging to a full fake face, that working on one makes the others possible and trying to ban one will have unintended consequences on the others.

I've been playing TTRPGs via videochat with my friends since pandemic, and I've often thought about setting up video avatars for our characters. It would be especially cool for the DM to be able to switch personas on the fly, and for players to have their characters in video chat.

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