AI masks for online criminals?

Apps that can edit video streams and change a face to be unrecognisable already exist. What are the use cases for privacy, security, and maliciousness?

A few years ago, in 2019, there was a huge uproar in China when a young woman vlogger glitched out and was revealed as a much older woman.

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49151042

More recently, in 2021, a young female Japanese vlogger was refueling her bike when she glitched out and was exposed as a 50 year old man.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56447357

Obviously the software has improved between these two events, but it is still not perfect. But let’s ignore that for a bit and focus on what it means that a mobile phone can alter or replace someone’s face in a video stream in real-time.

I’m not sure we’ve looked deeply into the ramifications of face changer apps.

(This post will be unlocked on Jan 10th)

That is incredibly useful for anyone that needs to make verification videos. Or who needs to disguise someone’s appearance in a video but not attract attention by wearing a mask.

Even subtle changes could be significant in terms of altering appearance to mitigate facial recognition systems. Face changers that make people more “attractive” do a variety of adjustments to the structure of the face. Pushing those further can easily create a face that is distinct from the original.

Defeating facial recognition would need only a filter that adjusts the distance between eyes, cheekbones, the shape and size of the nose and mouth, and the profile of the chin. All of which are already done by existing apps. This is without looking into adding adversarial data into the stream to make facial recognition fail.

Filming something where you don’t want to be recognised? Use a face changing app to appear like someone else. The value of appearing like someone real (but not yourself) is that it doesn’t bring attention to the face change. If it looks normal, but not like you, it will get less scrutiny.

Right now the possibilities of deep fakes for impersonating people over video are becoming more of a reality. Emulating another human being’s face and mannerisms is still a work in progress, but creating a fake person is already here.