[DTUBE] Scary If This Fell Into The Wrong Hands... Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment

Click the image above for the Dtube video

Recently, a video was put up on YouTube, showing a fairly scary form of technology which allows a person with a simple webcam to create real-time facial reenactment of a target video, with amazingly real results. As part of the demo they used video of President Bush and Vladimir Putin, both of which are altered in real time to match the facial expressions of the webcam user.

In the background you can see a quick example of the end result of the technology, which as I said before, is scary, as this could literally be one of the most powerful tools of propaganda, if used incorrectly and coupled with voice morphing technologies. Imagine the possibilities, being able to make a convincing video of someone like Assad, making a direct threat against the US people or admitting to a genocide on public TV, or any number of other propaganda videos they may choose to make, this technology would open up a wide range of possibilities.

To be clear the group who designed this technology isn't up to anything nefarious, and they even added some context to the project, so people fully understand their goals with this specific project. In their words, "This demo video is purely research-focused and we would like to clarify the goals and intent of our work. Our aim is to demonstrate the capabilities of modern computer vision and graphics technology, and convey it in an approachable and fun way."

With that said, it really does show how far technology has gotten, and as time goes on and things like this advance, seeing might not necessarily mean believing.

Credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk
http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/~niessner/thies2016face.html