ThisPersonDoesNotExist(.com)
What is this?
“thispersondoesnotexist.com” is a website which uses an AI model to generate new faces every-time you refresh the page. But the faces generated on the website are not real. Those faces actually don’t exist. They are just images created by an advanced AI model that uses data from real images to create new faces that do not even exist.
For example, this picture looks real and seems like a real woman in the picture, but it was created using this website.
Who built it?
The site is a creation of Philip Wang, former software engineer at Uber, and uses the research released by chip-maker NVIDIA.
The AI framework used in the website was invented by Ian Goodfellow back in 2014 .
How does it works?
The algorithm uses a neural network developed by NVIDIA called StyleGAN (Style Generative Adversarial Network). It uses the data-sets of multiple images of people, cats & anime characters and then combines them to make fake images that look increasingly close to reality.
What is GAN?
GAN or Generative Adversarial Network is an ML framework. Given a training set, it learns to generate new data with the same statistics as the training set.
For more detail on how the site works,
Look at the bottom right corner of the page and you will find the link to the GitHub repositories.
Are the images perfect?
No, some images generated by the AI system do have some signs of irregularities within them. Sometimes, the datasets may not combine with each other perfectly leaving some visible flaws in the image.
Is this safe?
It’s fair to be worried about any new technology. This website creates faces that no one has ever seen before, making it a very useful tool for malevolent users. People can use these fake images and hide their identity online for malicious use.
The same framework(StyleGAN) used in this website is also used to develop deep fakes (fake videos and audio files) which is already being used extensively to spread fake content online.
Is it legal?
Making websites is not illegal. You can use these fake images for personal use, but if you try using it commercially, it could lead to problems if spotted.
With AI being so advanced, it is important for big tech companies to work closely with governments all around the world.
The tech giants should be definitely responsible for any new technology because they are developing technology early and we’re at the cutting edge of this revolution. — Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet
