This Startup Claims its Deepfakes Will Protect Your Privacy
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:
This startup claims its deepfakes will protect your privacy:
As the saying goes: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. Now, if someone in a video clip is the same race, gender, and age as you, has the same gestures and emotional expressions as you-and is, in fact, based on you-yet doesn't exactly look like you ... is it still you?
No, according to Gil Perry, co-founder of Israeli privacy company D-ID. And that, he claims, is why his startup works. D-ID takes video footage-captured by a camera inside a store, for example-and uses computer vision and deep learning to create an alternative that protects the subject's identity. The process turns the "you" in the video into an avatar that has all the same attributes but looks a little different.
The upside for businesses is that this new, "anonymized" video no longer gives away the exact identity of a customer-which, Perry says, means companies using D-ID can "eliminate the need for consent" and analyze the footage for business and marketing purposes. A store might, for example, feed video of a happy-looking white woman to an algorithm that can surface the most effective ad for her in real time. (It's worth noting that the legitimacy of emotion recognition has been challenged, with a prominent AI research group recently calling for its use to be banned completely.)
Examples of D-ID's "smart anonymization" service show varying levels of success at obscuring identity in video. In one demonstration, former British prime minister David Cameron looks a bit like David Cameron with a mustache. In another still image, a woman looks somewhat different, but the two images still seem disconcertingly similar. In a third, Brad Pitt does become unrecognizable.
D-ID would not name particular customers that use its technology, but Perry said the company mainly works with retailers, car companies, and "large conglomerates that deploy CCTV in Europe." Ann Cavoukian, a D-ID advisory board member and former privacy commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario, says the solution is "a total win-win."
Other experts, however, say that the company misinterprets Europe's General Data Protection Rule, doesn't do what it's supposed to, and-even if it does-probably shouldn't be doing it anyway.
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