The People Who Don’t Exist
You know that urban legend that says everyone who appears in your dream is someone you saw once before. Even if they’re not familiar, your brain registered their face in the background of a crowd, because humans cannot imagine faces we’ve never seen. Which may or may not be true, but it’s the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw the pictures of the AI-generated faces.
Those people don’t actually exist.
It kind of freaks me out.
It’s easy to see this technology used in the creation of realistic-looking images for marketing or advertising purposes, for example. But it’s just as easy to imagine someone using it to create fake “evidence” of events that never happened in order to promote some agenda. At the speed this tech is progressing, it soon might be impossible to tell whether you’re looking at a real photograph or a computer generated image.
Is anyone else really uncomfortable over the idea of generating fake faces? (Or, for that matter, fake cats?)
5 comments
Yes, to me Computer generates faces are SUPER creepy. But then so are high quality composite sketches. They are all so eeery to me.
Wanna know something freaky? In my job we have the ability to turn a diagnostic CT scan image into a 3D reconstruction, which is super cool. But the last image done stays on the screen as a screen saver, so sometimes you walk into the tech room and there is this rotating 3D computer image of someone’s face, and it’s freaky as hell.
Suzy asks very often “Who is that?” when she sees a picture, advertisement or movie. And every time I’m reminded that I stopped caring about the people behind the picture so long ago I can’t even remember.
The other thought that creeps up is ‘I bet there are real people out there who have that face’ . Which is even creepier in the fake-evidence scenario.
Consider me freaked.
It is freaky but I am thinking that the science would also be using some logic that is close to how humans are. So maybe it’s more scientific than freaky. Maybe!
Definitely worth being freaked out about.
I feel like technology piqued its usefulness a few years ago. Since then, tech “advances” are more invasive and dehumanizing than productive (unless we’re talking about technology that improves health). Like everyone is so preoccupied with how cool AI can be, people aren’t stopping to ask how much artificial intelligence do we actually NEED?