Full body deepfake AI art: The Profile
Project Details
Project Description
The system presented is an artificial intelligence art installation that combines technology and art in order to give the viewers a meaningful experience. Its performance of creating a deepfake of the users body in under twelve minutes along with the complex scene construction make it appealing for the public. The project offers a new perspective on how to approach technology ethics on a large scale by involving people in the exploration of artificial intelligence.
The project has a distributed architecture: the local component used for user interaction and the remote component for heavy computation. The local component parses each frame using OpenCV library and computes the image displayed on the screen. The remote component has the objective to train as fast as possible the pix2pix generative adversarial neural network. The neural network is composed of two multilayer perceptron called the Generator and the Discriminator. The Generator has to learn to compute realistic images of the body having as input the skeleton.
Artistic dimension
The profile" is a critical view upon the dissolution of free will and the impact of our virtual alter ego from the online world. After experiencing my art, the viewers will start to question the truthfulness and completeness of the information presented to them. Discernment and free will are the most valuable principles that our society and democracy is built upon, and due to the people’s commodity they are in real threat.
My work is composed of 3 parts that match the steps of creating an online identity. The first step is exploring the platform, and that is expressed in my work as a reinterpretation of Dante’s circles of hell. The second part is filling the forms with your personal data and agreeing the terms and conditions which is, in my opinion, the modern Faustian bargain. The third part is exploring your profile, which starts manipulating your view on reality, by showing you images shaped from the data you have given to the AI. In the last part, the user is taken out of his comfort area, due to the fact that he is confronted with the manipulation and distortion of his own body.
"The profile" is a full experience for each of its viewers. In my opinion it' s the first time when the saying "art is about the viewer'' is explored in a true and powerful way. The performance has in its center the viewer, around who's image the virtual world is built. Each subject has a different and personalized virtual world. The skeleton is built after the subject’s measurements, the pictures that the viewer has to discover are placed random inside the virtual space and the generated body is unique for each of the users, each time they participate in the experiment. From the user's personal view of the art to the images generated and physical 1 and 0 written on the hardisk, “The profile” is a piece of art uniquely generated by each of its viewers.