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Comment by nope1000 | Hacker News Reader

Technically impressive but I fail to see a good use case for it that's not related to propaganda or scam and the website doesn't seem to list one either.

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Just a few off the top of my head:

Movies and TV:

  - As an alternative to motion capture for animation
  - As an alternative to existing de-aging CGI when you want to flash back to a younger version of a character (especially for cases where newer sequels are being made for much older movies)
  - As an easy way to get some additional footage if an actor no longer looks the part

In a professional setting:

  - Conduct job interviews were interviewees faces are mapped to the faces of a few pre-defined images, to reduce a major source of implicit bias in interviewing
  - Get some footage of yourself when you're looking your best, with great lighting, and use that rather than being off-camera if you're joining a meeting when you don't look great
  - Create virtual spokespeople to represent your company in marketing, and allow that person to be played by different actors

News and Politics:

  - An alternative to blurred or blocked out faces for people giving interviews or whistle blowing
  - Allow people to testify in court (virtually) without revealing their identity and risking retaliation

None of these uses - most of which benefit a slim percentage of society or are needlessly complicated by this technology - outweigh the severe downsides to society. It's the apex of foolishness to act glibly about this.

This all ends extremely badly.

The counterpoint is that some or all of these could make money and not enough people care how it ends if money is being made. I suspect it will have to take a terrorist plot using generative AI or something similarly significant to shut the door and even then it will be disallowed by us commoners, not the big four or five AI companies and not to the rest of the world.

Whether the upsides outweigh the downsides or not is a different discussion. My point is that there are plenty of ways someone might use this technology. If you do think that this technology is a net negative to society and should be controlled or prohibited, then it's still important to understand the potential ways someone might want to apply it so that you can be prepared to make your argument.

Personally, I have mixed feelings. I think that most of the outcomes we're most concerned about are going to happen one way or another, and developing in public or even commoditization of access to it is going to be a net reduction in harm over locking it up and pretending it doesn't exist while allowing people (and nations) with the resources to run large models in secret to develop and use the technology against people who are ignorant of what's possible.

Most people don't need to know how to code or have access to hacking tools. Their are such limited use cases for such tools and a great deal of harm can be caused the abuse of them.

One legitimate one I could imagine is if people want to pursue a career in the adult film industry but without having to reveal their true face (not with a celebrity face of course)

I have been thinking about this comment and if it isn't a celebrity then just someone you know?

If not someone you know then just a random stranger?

Not that I can think of a better use case but it is telling if this is the best we can do.

I just meant a synthetic human (a dalle/stylegan/stable diffusion face output).

Job interviews, bank loans, anywhere racism or discrimination exists (or might exist.)

There's some sort of filter on Instagram (or maybe it is some deepfake tool) that replaces girls' eyes with a set of nice eyes, but it seems the tool only has that pair of eyes, so all the videos of girls with these eyes are so noticable. And so many "influencers" have this pair of eyes, it's depressing.

It's even more amusing when one sees glitches like eyes appearing in front of a strand of hair...

If I had to dig way, way down to the bottom of the barrel for use cases, it would be very funny if everyone showed up to a meeting wearing one of the attendee's faces.

That would have been the dream of students during remote schooling times.

Don't they already?

Only things I can think of:

- streamer goofing around.

- Perhaps something like this could be used to map your facial expressions onto video game characters in real-time.

- could take tictok style social media to the next level of absurdity. make me into a meme. Ghana says goodbye etc.

Oh those without the imagination: this is gold marketing for makeup and fashion advertising companies. The "good use" is the multi-billion dollar makeup and fashion industry. People will submit their own images so they can see themselves randomly appear in their own media feeds in the latest fashions. This is a no brainer for those with the connections to fashion marketing.

It's fun for goofing around. Imagine a conference call with your buddies and each one comes with a different deepfake. Kind of like a costume party but on camera.

I don't think that compensates all the bad uses it will probably have.

All the replies to this question read like some sort of corporate marketing robot coming up with ideas.

In the overwhelmingly large majority of cases it'll be used for porn, scams and maybe 5% of the time it'll crop up in a meme of Donald Trump and Joe Biden singing memey Chinese songs.

Can't wait to hear all the stories of grandma losing her life savings cause a scammer can use Timmy's hyper realistic deep faked face at a click. AI truly is the future

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