The cover image of this article, which you see above, was taken from an online image store. The subjects are professional models, who pretend to take a selfie while a photographer (also a professional) captures them. But inside that photo could be you and your friends – whether they want it or not. The service that allows you to do this is called Hotshot and it’s a new app that uses theartificial intelligence (AI) to create ffake photos of you and your contactseven if they have not given their consent.
Hotshot, the AI that creates fake photos of you with your friends (whether they like it or not)
“What would it be like if Midjourney knew your friends… Introducing Hotshot!” he wrote on Twitter one of the founders of the app Aakash Sastry. “Have your picture taken with ANYONE IN YOUR CONTACTS doing ANYTHING.”
In one example, Sastry showed some Hotspot-generated photos of him and his partner together while enjoying salads in an elegant venue. The results aren’t perfect. The photos make their faces look like good quality video games, but it would not be possible to mistake them for real images.
The goal, after all, is not to create deep fakes. “Create memes of your friends“, reads the company’s description on the App Store, “it’s never been easier”.
But the question remains: why create images of you and your friends having fun together – instead of actually doing it? Perhaps this app could have sparked during the pandemic, when social distancing made it impossible to eat in a restaurant together. Though the Zoom screenshots looked more genuine.
Rather, this app suggests that by improving the rendering of faces, AI apps like these will make it very difficult distinguish between real images and fake photographs. And that we have to hope that deep fakes are limited to creating fake photos of people eating salad.