Something about the person in the picture online looks familiar. Maybe he reminds you of the guy who lived in the apartment downstairs when you first graduated college. Or maybe she looks like the woman who staffs the sign-in desk at the gym. Perhaps he has a similar beard to your brother-in-law, or her hair is like your high school guidance counselor's. Either way, you're sure you've seen them before, just can't place the exact spot.
In fact, there is actually no chance that you have met him or her, even briefly. And when I say no chance, I mean it is an absolute 100% impossibility that you and they have ever crossed paths, have shared a coffee or have had a locker next to one another. Not when you lived in Chicago. Not when you worked for that little company in the village. Not when you were in the school marching band. And why am I so certain?
Because this particular person does not exist.
His or her picture is the creation of a Generational Adversarial Network, or GAN. Without getting too geeky, it's a computer program that treats each part of a person's face as a mathematical equation, and then tweaks it ever so slightly. Hair, eyes, nose, skin color, wrinkles, lips: each is merely a variable to be manipulated. And when you take those myriad elements, change each ever so slightly, than randomly recombine them, you wind up with a completely unique person who, well doesn't really exist.
Former-Uber software engineer Phillip Wang created thispersondoesnotexist.com as an example of how it all works, and it does it in a flash. It's not always perfect: you can sometimes see mismatched earrings or strange hair or weird eyes. But in the scheme of things that doesn't really matter. It's both impressive and scary, as you think about how effortless the process has been made to create something fake, new, unique, and for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from reality.
Of course it didn't take long for others to borrow the idea and extend it. They use the same GAN process of subdividing something into its component parts, then making minute adjustments and putting the pieces back together to create a new composite. There are sites with cats that don't exist, beaches that don't exist and dresses that don't exist. In each case they look like they could: peruse any of them, and you could swear that you've seen that kitty or laid on that sand or remember an actress at the Academy Awards wearing that frock. But no. Refresh the screen, and a completely new and unique version of each pops up that also looks eerily familiar. Fool me once or twice or even three times, there is no shame in this case.
In some instances the fakes are almost realer than real. At a site that creates non-existent startups you find "Genity" a target marketing firm, whose Chief Person Officer is Aryon Rompre. Refresh it, and you get "Interoid" a property rental service, where you can get a professional level account for just $11 a month. Hit enter once more and up comes branding firm "Gradideo," which boasts a testimonial from Sema Kroa of the firm Sucent that says "Gradideo is the epitome of digital parenting." Who can argue with that kind of endorsement?
Likewise a site for made-up lyrics. All that's missing is the music: "Your love is so wild/you drive me like a train/Got me under your spell/ my heart goes boom, boom, boom." Or one for cities, where each looks like what you see when you fly cross country and look out the window. Or words. There's "endoptic," which it says means "relating to the sense organs of the gut, in particular the ducts." How about "cinchou," which is "a woman's uniform of black and white." Or "whizy" which is defined as "made or performed in a jazzy, lively, or impressive way even though it actually sounds silly."
Not that we needed other demonstrations, but all of this confirms that it's getting harder to tell fact from fiction. And so the next time you go online and see a snack or a music video or even a rental apartment that looks somewhat familiar and desirable, think twice before you send a deposit.
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Marc Wollin of Bedford does indeed exist. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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