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87 Def. Counsel J. 1 (2020)
Face/off: "DeepFake" Face Swaps and Privacy Laws

handle is hein.journals/defcon87 and id is 19 raw text is: 










Face/Off: DeepFake Face Swaps

and Privacy Laws



By:   Erik  Gerstner



                 Erik Gerstner is an associate at David, Kamp & Frank,
                 L.L.C. in Newport News, Virginia. Erik received his JD
                 from William & Mary Law School in 2018. He focuses his
                 practice on civil litigation, including business litigation,
                 real estate, personal injury, and reputational injury. This
                 article has been expanded from one the author published
                 in For The Defense.


   N 2018, a curious trend spread
   rapidly across  the   Internet:
   people posting videos of Nicholas
Cage's  performances  in  various
Hollywood films.1 To the uninitiated
viewer, these videos might appear
to be nothing special, just various
facets of  Cage's prolific career.
However,  closer inspection would
reveal a  subtler thread running
throughout  these clips: none  of
these    performances    actually
involved Cage. Rather, thanks  to
relatively new artificial intelligence
(AI)-powered  software  programs
colloquially known as DeepFakes,
Internet  users  had   seamlessly
inserted Cage's face over the faces of
the original actors in these scenes,

1 John Maher, This was the year of the
deepfake Nicolas Cage meme, THE DAILY DoT
(Dec.  27,   2018),  available at


making it appear as though Cage had
always portrayed those characters.2
   Nicholas Cage's central role in
DeepFake videos is fitting, given his
starring  role   alongside  John
Travolta in 1997's Face/Off, a film in
which his and Travolta's characters
both end  up wearing  the other's
faces throughout the film. Although
it was only a  fanciful Hollywood
invention in 1997, face swapping
technology entered the mainstream
in 2017. In  August of that year,
University     of     Washington
researchers  released  a   video,
seemingly   of   Barack   Obama,
discussing topics such as terrorism,
fatherhood, and job creation, which
had  been created  using machine

https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/nicolas
-cage-memes-deepfakes-2 018.
2 Id.

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