Not even the time to tell you what FakeYou is, and the Privacy Guarantor has opened an investigation related to this new (or rather, recently in the limelight) app.
This is not a joke: we were about to write an article in which to illustrate this application that simulates the voices of VIPs, and our Guarantor has started an investigation to verify its characteristics and possible risks.
So we just have to explain how FakeYou works, and then see how and why the Guarantor has reported the app.
Il deepfake e FakeYou
We already know the deep fake, and we have talked about it (and talked about it again) in recent days for a story that involved Bruce Willis.
Willis, at first, seemed to have sold his image rights to a deepfake company, in fact. But in a short time came the denial of the now former actor.
Deepfake, let’s remember, is an artificial intelligence-based image synthesis technique. Using video and images (facial and bodily), deepfake creates more. In short: you can take the face of a famous actor and have him act in his absence.
The possible uses, virtuous or not, are many. Suffice it to recall what happened in the early days of the conflict between Russia-Ukraine: through the deepfake a fake Zelensky was made to say that Ukraine would surrender to Putin.
In short: the debate on the ethical limits of deepfake is heated. And this is where FakeYou and the Guarantor come into play.
What is FakeYou
FakeYou is a platform with which you can generate an audio starting from a text. And so far, nothing particularly innovative.
The fact is that FakeYou provides the voices of famous personalities from the world of entertainment and politics.
A double selection can be made: either by category (musicians, actors …) or by nationality. If you choose the voices of our country, for example, you have – among others – Giorgia Meloni, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini. But also Wanna Marchi and Gerry Scotti. We type a text and go: the character we want will pronounce it.
There is also a more advanced sectionin which some famous people (from Donald Trump to Elon Musk) appear on video: you choose a sentence, they pronounce it and the lip corresponds to what we typed.
How FakeYou was born (and is developing)
FakeYou was created by a group of US developers, based in Atlanta, led by Brandon Thomas.
The FakeYou.com domain actually dates back to 2002, but Google Trend shows a peak in searches in the spring of 2022. Subscribers to the server are more than 68,000, and short phrases forged with the voices of VIPs begin to circulate on social networks.
Furthermore, the platform has a peculiarity: anyone can intervene by adding the voice of a famous person. Each new entry is paid up to $ 150.
We could not resist doing some tests with Italian characters, and we must say that the yield is unequal: more or less realistic depending on the VIP and the words you are asked to pronounce. But the average level of mimicry didn’t strike us as amazing.
FakeYou and the Guarantor
Anyway, beyond the purely technical aspect of the platform, its risks are immediately evident.
With FakeYou is available, indeed within everyone’s reach, an instrument that steals the others’ vocals. And whose uses aimed at delegitimizing the current character (who, we imagine, will hardly have given consent to the dissemination of such audio files) can be varied.
The investigation of the Guarantor
The danger of FakeYou has not escaped the Guarantor for the protection of personal data.
Which, as we read in a note published Wednesday 12 October on the official website, has opened an investigation in this regard.
The perplexities are clearly expressed: “The concerns of the Guarantor are directed towards the potential risks that could arise from the improper use of a personal data, such as the voice.”
The Guarantor therefore asked the company for clarification and reassurance on the matter (although we do not understand how they could arrive: the violation seems rather obvious).
The company is required to “provide the methods of constructing the voice of famous people, the type of personal data processed, as well as the purposes of the processing of data referring to well-known personalities and users who use the app.
Furthermore, the company must indicate the location of the data centers that store personal data, both with reference to registered users from Italy and to well-known personalities, and the technical and organizational measures adopted to guarantee a level of security adequate to the risk. . “