Commercial deepfake

[I_ran_out_of_ideas]

I just came across these guys. www.colossyan.com

There's nothing new or shocking about deepfake, but these guys started an actual product.

I understand they are targeting small product review videos or online education videos, but they also mentioned that the end goal would be to replace expensive Hollywood sets. BTW Al Pacino already had a movie like that (S1m0ne).

Would you use this?

 

[Kisai]

1 minute ago, I_ran_out_of_ideas said:

I just came across these guys. www.colossyan.com

There's nothing new or shocking about deepfake, but these guys started an actual product.

I understand they are targeting small product review videos or online education videos, but they also mentioned that the end goal would be to replace expensive Hollywood sets. BTW Al Pacino already had a movie like that (S1m0ne).

Would you use this?

 

Deepfakes have minimal commercial value.

 

The largest potential use, is in film/television/video game use to put actors that are deceased into remakes of the films they were in, or shows/games they didn't have video/voices in but were the original actor for. For example, bringing back Gary Owen's voice (original Space Ghost voice, and many hanna-barbera cartoon voices) or Mel Blanc (Original Bugs Bunny Voice) in remasters/remakes of the cartoons they were in, or cameos in related shows, rather than having a new voice actor try to sound like them.

 

But I want to point out specifically, that copyright concerns is the largest reason why deepfakes/ML-based video or audio of "existing" people will likely not happen at commercial scale. However...

 

ML can put YOUR voice into a language or accent that you don't have or know, and make it sound like a native speaker. So consider the application of this for exporting films/tv shows/cartoons. Instead of having crappy dubs (russian dubs of anything are especially awful, just one or two voices over-dubbing the original dialogue)  you can have the original voice actually speak the dubbed language perfectly.

 

So you deepfake the mouths/heads on the characters in films and suddenly nobody is even aware it's been dubbed.

 

But like I said, the commercial value is pretty low, because the cost of doing the deepfake is extremely high, and without getting the permission of the actual actors/voice-actors that comprise the depiction/voice it's also legally prohibitive. If you only use data that people have consented to with the knowledge it will be used this way (Eg not scraped off facebook or youtube), you're down to maybe a half dozen voices in english, and even less in all other languages, since pretty much all ML voices are based on LibriTTS.