Real-Time Face Substitution Will Make Video Conferencing Creepy

When Chatroulette first launched, there was a storm of people who joined and started using it. Since the media coverage and hype about what it is has decreased, the activity on this social networking site has died down some. I have never tried it myself, but I think it’s quite a unique little way to connect and meet new people. However, as with any technology, the way that it is used tends to get spoiled when people create their own way of disgusting others. There are of course a ton of stories that have been released that are really entertaining when it comes to the Chatroulette site.

However, things are about to change quite drastically for the inhabitants of Chatroulette, and it’s about to become a creepier community than usual. There is a new way to enhance or add creepiness to your video conferencing app using a new way of adding facial substitution to the actual video. It works quite similarly to the Facetime feature that lets you switch the background for whatever place you want.

Basically what it does is add someone else’s face on top of your own to make you look, well… maybe not like someone else (as the technology is still in its infancy), but it allows you to conceal your identity. For whatever reason anyone would want to do this, to me, is creepy as hell. Knowing that someone can just take your photo and act like you on a video conference is quite alarming, don’t you think? I don’t know if the technology will ever be developed into perfection, but the first renders aren’t too convincing as far as making me believe the person is actually someone else. However, we’ve seen technologies go from a basic concept to perfection in less then a year or two before so… Bottom line, this technology is going to make your future video conferencing insanely creepy, don’t you agree? (Technology developed by Arturo Castro by using Kyle McDonald’s ofxFacetracker and Jason Saragih’s facetracker library)