As AI tools get better and better, deepfakes have been getting deeper and deeper. There’s an exposé in 404 Media that is the best work I’ve seen about the evolving practice of synthetic face swapping. Operators of Instagram accounts for AI-generated influencers are deepfaking AI model faces onto videos of real models and adult entertainers in order to promote paid subscriptions on fan sites.
The use of genuine footage (which is difficult to detect without direct comparison of original and altered videos) not only misuses the identity of the AI models but also exploits the content and likeness of the original video creators. This is a hot mess. It’s also becoming extraordinarily common.
There are some benign uses of deepfakes (commercial video production, creation of party favors, parody videos, etc.), but there are far more truly evil uses. Face swapping synthetic influencers’ faces onto real humans is only the beginning. This is going to get much, much worse.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.