Your social-media photo could soon have you starring in a porn video

Samsung delivered a paper (via CNET) about its new technology, dubbing its creations "realistic neural talking heads." In the past, only celebrities and public figures could be the subject of such video manipulation because of the large number of raw material (still images) required to make such a video. However, Samsung's discovery could make it possible for someone with malicious intent to grab a single photo of any person from social media and create a video of that person committing various crimes or even sexual acts.

This is done by first training the system to learn how a human face moves by watching a large number of videos. It then applies what it has just learned to a single photo or a small number of images to create the clip. While a subject's facial landmarks are used to help create realistic facial movements, there is a drawback; videos made from a small set of images don't provide the same detail as those created from a larger number of photographs. For example, Deepfake video of Marilyn Monroe created in Sammy's lab missed the film icon's famous mole. A video created by the researches includes an example showing that a Deepfake clip made from a single photo doesn't have the same detail seen on videos created using eight and 32 photos.

Right now, there are glitches in this system that can make Deepfake video created from a single photo look fake. But eventually, not only will these glitches be smoothed over, the technology will undoubtedly end up in the hands of criminals looking to score some blackmail money, or put politicians they don't like into compromising positions that never happened. And with the speed at which AI is advancing, these issues could pop up sooner than you might think.