A Chinese face-swap app Zao went viral and became #1 on China’s iOS store despite being out for only three days.
While previously the face-modification app FaceApp went viral for its success with its gender-swapping filter and instant-aging filter, Zao takes it to another level with its deep-fake technology. With just one picture uploaded into the app, Zao can use the user’s face and place it in short footages of movies, musical performances, and TV shows.
In case you haven’t heard, #ZAO is a Chinese app which completely blew up since Friday. Best application of ‘Deepfake’-style AI facial replacement I’ve ever seen.
Here’s an example of me as DiCaprio (generated in under 8 secs from that one photo in the thumbnail) 🤯 pic.twitter.com/1RpnJJ3wgT
— Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019
Just two days ago, a Twitter user called Allan Xia posted a tweet that shares the result of his face-swap with Leonardo DiCaprio. The 30-second video has various scenes starring DiCaprio but with the user’s face instead. In fact, the result is so impressive that no one would’ve guessed it’s fake if they haven’t watched any DiCaprio movie. Needless to say, the more images users provide to the app, the higher the accuracy of the face swap.
However, a Bloomberg report stated that users have been complaining because Zao’s initial user agreements give the app “free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able” to user-generated content. This comes off as invasion of privacy to Zao’s users, leading to a change in its user agreement. The current agreement states that the content will only be used for the sole purpose of improving the app’s technology unless users provide permissions for other usage.
Unfortunately for Zao, its app rating is now 1.9 stars out of 5 with more than 4,000 reviews. There are definitely a lot of users who aren’t happy with its initial user agreement, but there are definitely more who would download the app just to try out the deep-fake technology.
