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Disney Research Creates Face-Swapping Technique For High-Res Video (techcrunch.com) 57

shirappu writes: A new paper by Disney Research shows off a newly developed neural network that can swap faces in photos and videos at high-resolution. The idea behind this technology is to replace an actor's performance with a different actor's face, or for roles that require de-aging or increasing age, or for portraying actors who have passed away. Current face-swapping technology (also known as deepfakes) often creates an "uncanny valley" effect, where something about the image or video feels off. Though there is some of that in Disney Research's tech, it's still a huge step forward for creating believable face-swapping in the entertainment industry. This has once again brought up a conversation around the ethical use of this technology and the potential for malicious use. However, given the amount of ongoing R&D in this area, it seems unlikely that we'll see any slowdown in the near future.
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Disney Research Creates Face-Swapping Technique For High-Res Video

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  • Disney? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:01AM (#60246328)

    The Porn industry says thanks.

    • Disney+++ is the adult version. 10 more years of Hanna Montanna in store too.

      • Hmm...I wonder if they'll start "capturing" peoples' images, and then kill them so they don't have to pay them royalties, like in the old 1981 movie LOOKER [youtube.com]...?

        I loved that movie as a kid, and Susan Dey was still quite hot back then!!

        A little more on the movies here [wikipedia.org],

        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          Hmm...I wonder if they'll start "capturing" peoples' images, and then kill them so they don't have to pay them royalties

          Why bother? There's billions of us, you can buy the rights off a nobody with zero acting experience for next to nothing or just create a generative model that's a blend of people but not anyone in particular. Once you got virtual actors you make your own stars.

      • Disney+++ is the adult version. 10 more years of Hanna Montanna in store too.

        I've already seen the Hanna Montanna porn. Not a lookalike either, I'm pretty sure it was the original actress.

    • Porn Industry, now you don't have any excuse anymore to refuse us the peepee-tape.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    So that makes sense and is a good investment. What if an actor turns out to be offensive 20 from now? you just replace it with another face and/or skin color to a non-offensive person and your investment in a movie has been saved.

    As we have seen, Disney have been busy covering up bits and parts in their old movies so they were ready for there non-offensive streaming offers.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/... [theverge.com]

  • https://youtube.com/watch?v=yj... [youtube.com]

    IMHO, they have created an "automatic monster creator". I don't remember having seeing such HORRENDOUS pastiches on a digital face since ages ago.

    And at 2:04 they even claim they reach a "level in realism far beyond competing methods" ROFLMAO

    • by Anonymous Coward

      You posted the right link, but if these are your takeaways, it's as if you didn't watch it. Or if you did, you didn't understand it.

    • by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      Didn't they already do something like this for Solo to make the actor kind of look like Harrison Ford? And of course, you also have Looper where they made Jason Gordon Levitt kind of look like Bruce Willis. And if you go back further you have Gladiator, where the actor playing Proximo died during filming so they had to use a body double and digitally recreate his face (they simply used darkness to mask the digital face to cover up imperfections).

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @09:13AM (#60246550)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          For putting dead actors into scenes (or de-aging them etc.) they use face mounted cameras and motion tracking anyway.

          This tech doesn't seem much better than what you can get for free, i.e. deepfakes. The resolution is supposedly higher but all the sample videos are facing the camera and well lit.

        • ...the actor playing Proximo

          Actually in Gladiator it was the dead actor it was

          Do you know nothing? That was Oliver [imdb.com] Reed [wikipedia.org], you ignorant cretans! He played an amazing Bill Sikes. I'll never forget his performance as Vulcan in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen .

      • you also have Looper where they made Jason Gordon Levitt kind of look like Bruce Willis

        That was makeup + prosthetics.

  • by Cannucklehead ( 34970 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:31AM (#60246422) Homepage

    And this is how RDJ stays the face of Iron Man in perpetuity.

  • Oh wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:33AM (#60246432)
    This will be so useful for when some actor gets "cancelled" because of a politically incorrect tweet they made 20 years ago, now they can just swap in a different actor's face and the show must go on!
    • Try for "when the fake news wants to frame political opposition." Combine it with "regional" programming to ensure no one catches on and it's a recipe for totalitarianism.
  • Now if Disney could actually create a plot that didn't deserve to go direct to streaming.

    I wonder if they plan to redo Star Wars with the Backstreet Boys and Miley Cyrus?

  • After all, isn't Hollywood all about suspension of disbelief?

  • by Ronin Developer ( 67677 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:56AM (#60246494)

    Couple this with VR goggles, you can have the partner of your choice and you won't even have to worry, after a hard night of drinking, that their bag might fall off...unless the battery dies before they leave.

    • Couple this with VR goggles, you can have the partner of your choice and you won't even have to worry, after a hard night of drinking, that their bag might fall off...unless the battery dies before they leave.

      I'd give my wife the whole setup. Would really improve my sex life.

  • to get a newly rendered hi res result, to beef up (really) old footage?
    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      There's already PULSE [arxiv.org] for that, but the problem that you can see in figure 3 is that even with near perfect photo realism there's an ambiguity in facial expression, lip motion etc. which would probably go straight into the uncanny valley as being overly neutral in expression, lacking smooth transitions and lip sync. So you would probably need a more advanced model to fill in the missing motion detail. Also this model is only for photo realism not identity preservation, so it's the natural image manifold of

  • I was a theatre techie in the early '80s, and swore that I'd never go back to that profession until they had replaced actors with holograms. This is the next best thing, although I suppose they don't need the lighting guy any more either.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      This is the next best thing, although I suppose they don't need the lighting guy any more either.

      There's plenty of people that work on virtual lighting in animations, both on the tech and story side. When you look at modern 3D production it's pretty much a whole virtual set.

  • We might finally see a Nicholas Cage movie wherein Nicholas Cage plays someone other than himself.
  • https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]

    CGI replaces people in videoed. Murder n mayhem ensues.

    Way ahead of its time.

  • I mostly hate every application this tech possibly has, but I would accept it for non-closeup stunt double shots. Previously, they've always had to have the shot show a different side of the body so the face is excluded.

    • I mostly hate every application this tech possibly has, but I would accept it for non-closeup stunt double shots. Previously, they've always had to have the shot show a different side of the body so the face is excluded.

      Nah...just have the actor "man up" and do their own stunts like Tom Cruise does.

      I mean, that guy is a royal flake, BUT...gotta give him credit, he gives it all for his movies and stunt work!!

  • Paul Newman stated in his will [businessinsider.com] that his likeness will never be used by any "virtual performance or reanimation of any performance by me by the use of any technique, technology or medium now in existence or which may be known or created in the future anywhere in the universe."
    • by ranton ( 36917 )

      I wonder how defensible such a clause really is. Postmortem rights are part of our case law, and First Amendment defenses have been successful in cases where estates have sued movie studios, authors, playwrights, etc. after using the likeness of a deceased person. I guess we will find out when Paul Newman's estate sues the first person who tries using his likeness after death (or another celebrity with a similar clause).

  • I mean, who could ever do it better than Weird Al's wizards in his "Perform This Way" video?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    from
    https://www.dailymotion.com/vi... [dailymotion.com]

  • In that movie a surfer's face was replaced by the lead actress' face. Only 'new' thing is they are doing it with neural networks. There is prior art as the 'deep fake' research has shown.

  • This would blow up the foreign film market.

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