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AI Businesses Technology

Companies Are Using AI-Generated People To Appear More Diverse (washingtonpost.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
AI startups are selling images of computer-generated faces that look like the real thing, offering companies a chance to create imaginary models and "increase diversity" in their ads without needing human beings. From a report: One firm is offering to sell diverse photos for marketing brochures and has already signed up clients, including a dating app that intends to use the images in a chatbot. Another company says it's moving past AI-generated headshots and into the generation of full, fake human bodies as early as this month. The AI software used to create such faces is freely available and improving rapidly, allowing small start-ups to easily create fakes that are so convincing they can fool the human eye. The systems train on massive databases of actual faces, then attempt to replicate their features in new designs. But AI experts worry that the fakes will empower a new generation of scammers, bots and spies, who could use the photos to build imaginary online personas, mask bias in hiring and damage efforts to bring diversity to industries. The fact that such software now has a business model could also fuel a greater erosion of trust across an Internet already under assault by disinformation campaigns, "deepfake" videos and other deceptive techniques.
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Companies Are Using AI-Generated People To Appear More Diverse More

Companies Are Using AI-Generated People To Appear More Diverse

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  • So? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rldp ( 6381096 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:07PM (#59600214)

    How is this different from the use of (the same) stock photos of happy multi-culti on every single corporate website?

    The reality is corporations aren't really that diverse, or interested in it. They are interested in people working longer hours for lower wages - this just happens to be easier to attain via H1B and programs like it.

    • Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:31PM (#59600296)

      Exactly. Corporations have been trying to convince people that they are not evil since corporations have been around. This is not new. For example, consider Alphabet Inc.

    • Presumably some real person had to model for the stock photo and was paid as a result. I find it rather amusing that the idiots that yammer on about diversity have somehow found a way to only further deprive minorities of work.

    • > How is this different from the use of (the same) stock photos of happy multi-culti on every single corporate website?

      you don't have to pay an actor with AI-Generated pics

  • Does it fool facial recognition? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Headw1nd ( 829599 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:19PM (#59600258)
    I would be curious how convincing these appear to facial recognition software. Could people use this technique to gunk up facial recognition databases with millions of non-existent people?

    • That's an excellent idea.

      Another variant on it would be if you could get the AI models to produce these likenesses in a way that could be used to 3D print masks so that not only could you have a high resolution photo of a non-existent face suitable for passports or IDs, you could also actually *wear* it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I would be curious how convincing these appear to facial recognition software. Could people use this technique to gunk up facial recognition databases with millions of non-existent people?

      Sure, but facial recognition isn't that accurate to begin with. If you take a typical test set like LFW they have 5700 identities and you achieve about 99.83% accuracy so 1/600 is wrong. You can roughly approximate that if you double the number of identities the distance between them halves so with 2*5700 identities you'd see 1/(600/2) = 1/300 error rate. So if we take a set of 2^10*5700 = ~5.8 million we'd be wrong about 63% of the time. If you go for 2^20*5700 = ~6 billion we'd be wrong 99.95% of the time

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Use images of real politicians until they clamp down on the use of facial recognition.

      • You don't even have to create their image, all you have to create is something that creates the same data.

        Essentially what you end up with is a hash. If you can collide it, you have won.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          That's a great point. Kinda want to create an evil twin identity now just to screw with facial recognition. Set up some contradictions that can't be resolved.

  • I think the tech itself makes people uneasy.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:20PM (#59600260) Journal

    Visit a page like:

    https://thispersondoesnotexist... [thisperson...texist.com]

    The whole thing is just a bit eerie, knowing that those human faces aren't of real people and are just computer AI generated likenesses. So sure, this tech disturbs people. But yeah, in the big picture? I'm not sure it's going to really cause a noticeable increase in fraud, because with billions of people on the planet to choose from? There were always plenty of opportunities to take a random photo of someone, claim it's somebody else, and try to make a fake persona.

    The same computer power that makes this fakery possible ALSO enables new tools to do facial recognition and matching of images, to confirm which really correspond to a human being and which don't....

    • Yes, but with the ability to search for pictures, it's trivial to find stock images of people and discover fraudulent use of a stock image as "our CEO".

      If you can simply generate a picture that you can be certain cannot be found anywhere else on the net (because you just generated it), it gets heaps more difficult.

  • They've now replicated the EXACT outcome of diversity before experience of individuals......NOTHING!

  • Because AI is more artificial and intelligent than just morphing a few existing face images into a new image?

    • Can't get more diverse than that, and it's probably also a pretty good analogy of what it actually usually means in a company...

    • Photoshop funny hats on to all your Getty images and call it a day. Everyone wins.

  • Just like on Scrubs (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:26PM (#59600282)

    Where Turk’s alma mater had photoshopped him into a magazine cover photo in three different locations so they’d seem less white.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by fish_in_the_c ( 577259 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @04:36PM (#59600322)

    Apparently all the talking heads are convinced the consumers are actually interested in the diversity of whom they buy toilet paper from?
    Seriously why would anyone care? Attempting to make adds diverse isn't going to help sales, does nothing to actually help minorities, if you are going to lie you should at least have a useful reason.

    • The nastiness is that they will send different content to different users based on data mined from facebook. When you go to the company website the pictures of the "team" will re-enforce whatever biases the marketing team have deemed you specifically to be susceptable to.

      • So if I hate blacks I don't get to see black people in your company?

        Does that work with ads too? I don't care about the skin color of people, but I am really, really prejudiced against ads.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Someone is spending the big money, paying for the billable hours to do it.
      To create and present some vision of the world they want to see presented due to their side of politics?
      Print, present the images and they "made" a "better" world happen?
      The person paying for all the art changes feels better?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Diversity in ads does help sales actually. The white people market is heavily saturated, but minorities are often either in a rapidly up and coming demographics or just me e saturated with ads directed at then yet.

      • In my experience, people from different ethnic backgrounds care about diversity about as much as anyone from any other one. Skin is really just the store front, what matters is what's in the skull, not what's on it.

    • Diversity for marketing material isn't likely to gain customers. It's an insurance policy against losing customers. If it doesn't cost them significantly more to market with diversity then they lose practically nothing from doing it. On the other hand, if they don't market that way then they're just the one person away from a figurative scandal.

    • Actually it does. Most people either don't give a shit about diversity or they're in favor. So it either doesn't affect you or it makes you like the brand more.

  • Since I don't trust anyone to begin with I don't see a problem

  • Stock photo companies will sell you all the diversity you want. They have been offering this service for decades.

    https://www.shutterstock.com/ [shutterstock.com]
    https://pixabay.com/ [pixabay.com]
    https://www.gettyimages.com/ [gettyimages.com]

    Of course if you actually want to be diverse that is an entirely different matter. That's a whole different market than what what these AI images are offering though...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The difference is that with an AI face it's harder to tell that it's not really an employee. With real people a reverse image search will usually find them, especially models.

      BTW yandex has the best reverse image search of you ever need it.

      • That is certainly true. AI's are also good for creating one time pics that you want to make sure can't be traced back. There are any number of use cases for having something that can't be traced back.

      • Do people actually do that? I just assume that all the pics on corporate websites, unless they are supposed to be of specific employees, are just stock images, because, well, they all are.

  • One firm is offering to sell diverse photos for marketing brochures and has already signed up clients, including a dating app that intends to use the images in a chatbot.

    Why exactly does a dating site need a chatbot with realistic looking human faces?

    • I dunno, does the chatbot know how to use myspace angles to make itself not look so fat and frumpy? Does it photoshop in collar bones to further sell the illusion?

    • All dating sites struggle with a gender imbalance. More men sign up than women. This makes the site frustrating for the men, and also leads to an unpleasant environment for everyone - the men end up resorting to increasingly desperate ploys for attention, while the women are flooded with hopeful suiters until it becomes creepy. If they could perhaps generate a few thousand artificial women, they could perhaps try to soak up a bit of that imbalance.

  • If they get full body going then the real money will be in using the tech for pornography. No surprise there.

  • I mean, is this really different than always calling Tony from HR to be in every publicity shoot because he's black?

  • This is old news (Score:3)

    by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @05:58PM (#59600636)

    ML has been used to generate face expressions for some time. Here is one video demonstrating it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    People imitated:

    0:01 Jim Meskimen
    0:14 Jack Nicholson
    0:32 Tommy Lee Jones
    0:45 Robin Williams
    0:56 George Clooney
    1:10 Christopher Walken
    1:26 Ian McKellen
    1:40 Nick Offerman
    1:57 Christoph Waltz
    2:11 Anthony Hopkins
    2:27 John Malkovich
    2:45 Arnold Schwarzenegger
    3:01 Joe Pesci
    3:14 George W. Bush
    3:30 Colin Firth
    3:43 Morgan Freeman
    3:59 Jim Meskimen

  • Why are people and companies so afraid of the SJW twitter mob?

  • With 7+ billion people on this planet and all you can come up with is a computer generated face, to look like you're diverse? In recognition of the shallowness of your sincerity, don't bother me with your ads, commercials, flyers, robo-calls because whatever you're selling, I aint buying. How's that for sincerity for your diversity?

  • What if this AI generates a face that looks identical to mine and than it gets used in som ad or whatever that i don't agree with because i don't want to be associated with that product/brand/person?

    Currently, if you buy stock photo's, the models have signed away their rights, so it is not really an issue. But with an AI generating faces, it is bound to generate one that looks like somebody that actually exists.

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