Book Image

Exploring Deepfakes

By : Bryan Lyon, Matt Tora
Book Image

Exploring Deepfakes

By: Bryan Lyon, Matt Tora

Overview of this book

Applying Deepfakes will allow you to tackle a wide range of scenarios creatively. Learning from experienced authors will help you to intuitively understand what is going on inside the model. You’ll learn what deepfakes are and what makes them different from other machine learning techniques, and understand the entire process from beginning to end, from finding faces to preparing them, training the model, and performing the final swap. We’ll discuss various uses for face replacement before we begin building our own pipeline. Spending some extra time thinking about how you collect your input data can make a huge difference to the quality of the final video. We look at the importance of this data and guide you with simple concepts to understand what your data needs to really be successful. No discussion of deepfakes can avoid discussing the controversial, unethical uses for which the technology initially became known. We’ll go over some potential issues, and talk about the value that deepfakes can bring to a variety of educational and artistic use cases, from video game avatars to filmmaking. By the end of the book, you’ll understand what deepfakes are, how they work at a fundamental level, and how to apply those techniques to your own needs.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Part 1: Understanding Deepfakes
6
Part 2: Getting Hands-On with the Deepfake Process
10
Part 3: Where to Now?

Improving image quality

The earliest known image that was taken through mechanical means is the Niépce héliographie, which was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1827. It was taken through the window of his workshop by exposing a pewter plate covered in a thin layer of a concoction made from lavender and bitumen. This plate was exposed to sunlight for several days to create a blurry, monochrome image.

Figure 9.1 – The Niépce Heliograph taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1827

Figure 9.1 – The Niépce Heliograph taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1827

Since then, images have gotten better at capturing reality, but the process has not been perfected. There are always various limitations that mean that the images aren’t quite accurate in color, cannot capture all the details, or cause distortions in the image. A truly perfect image is mindboggling to even consider: from a single perfect image, you’d be able to zoom into any atom even on the other side of the universe and our...