Over the past month, Younes, a 25-year-old developer, has had a series of hits on social media. In a few weeks he published several deepfake videos (videos that digitally replace one face with another), with greater or lesser success. This September 13, he chose to use a video of Squeezie, while the latter deplored the sexism against Manon, a participant in GP Explorer 2. He then replaced the timbre of her voice and her face with those of Emmanuel Macron.
HD video and great computing power
This September 14 at the beginning of the afternoon, the video had already accumulated more than 800,000 views on Twitter, and more than a million views on TikTok. It was published on the Internet a few days after another video created by Younes, in which a fake Kylian Mbappé appears being reprimanded by his father, which accumulated more than 7 million views on Twitter.
Speaking to Tech&Co, the artificial intelligence enthusiast explains how to work with the DeepFaceLab face replacement tool, an open source software that requires immense computing power. For his work – and certainly for his passion – Younes invested in an expensive graphics card (GeForce RTX 4090).
Basic video does not require such good quality. The features (here from Squeezie) must be readable enough so that the machine can create a “digital mask” and replace the original face. To make everything more realistic, Younes deliberately degrades the quality of the face generated in high resolution, to better integrate it into the original sequence.
Another open source tool called RVC is used for voice cloning. As with all artificial intelligence tools, you have to “feed the machine” by sending it numerous sound extracts of the voice to imitate, in this case that of Emmanuel Macron. Then you simply send the audio file of the original video voice (Squeezie’s) so you can transform the latter.
Using simple editing software, it is easy to reconstruct the sequence, matching the newly generated sound with the lip movements of the deepfake.
Risk management
If seeing Emmanuel Macron tattooed with a cap does not raise immense fears about the spread of false information, the experience of Kylian Mbappé’s video left its mark on Younes. When posting the video, he was careful to include the name of his Twitter account (French AI Covers) in the image, in apparent reference to artificial intelligence.
Above all, the sequence did not seek absolute realism: the creator periodically publishes humorous videos starring the PSG star. The face of the man presented as the footballer’s father has not been transformed to look like Wilfrid Mbappé. But stories that need an audience have deliberately camouflaged the reference to AI written on the image and presented the sequence as authentic.
With Tech&Co he believes he has become aware of the sensitive nature of his creations, ensuring that “he takes care not to ridicule anyone.” But, in his opinion, the publication of humorous deepfakes can also be useful in raising awareness among Internet users about the risk of manipulation that they entail.
“I prefer that people discover the power of deepfakes in this way, knowing full well that a video is not authentic, than through sequences intended to manipulate them and created for activist or political purposes,” says Younes, eager to popularize the topic. of AI for the general public.
Source: BFM TV
