Researchers detail texture-swapping AI that could be used to create deepfakes

In a preprint paper published on Arxiv.org, They claim it can modify any image in a variety ways, including texture swapping, while remaining "substantially" more efficient compared with previous generative models. The researchers acknowledge that their work could be used to create deepfakes, or synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness. In a human perceptual study, subjects were fooled 31% of the time by images created using the Swapping Autoencoder. But they also say that proposed detectors can successfully spot images manipulated by the tool at least 73.9% of the time, suggesting the Swapping Autoencoder is no more harmful than other AI-powered image manipulation tools.