Digital cloning

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Digital cloning is an emerging technology, that involves deep-learning algorithms, which allows one to manipulate currently existing audio, photos, and videos that are hyper-realistic.[1] One of the impacts of such technology is that hyper-realistic videos and photos makes it difficult for the human eye to distinguish what is real and what is fake.[2] Furthermore, with various companies making such technologies available to the public, they can bring various benefits as well as potential legal and ethical concerns.

Digital cloning can be categorized into audio-visual (AV), memory, personality, and consumer behaviour cloning.[3] In AV cloning, the creation of a cloned digital version of the digital or non-digital original can be used, for example, to create a fake image, an avatar, or a fake video or audio of a person that cannot be easily differentiated from the real person it is purported to represent. A memory and personality clone like a mindclone is essentially a digital copy of a person’s mind. A consumer behavior clone is a profile or cluster of customers based on demographics.

Truby and Brown coined the term “digital thought clone” to refer to the evolution of digital cloning into a more advanced personalized digital clone that consists of “a replica of all known data and behavior on a specific living person, recording in real-time their choices, preferences, behavioral trends, and decision making processes.”[3]

Digital cloning first became popular in the entertainment industry. The idea of digital clones originated from movie companies creating virtual actors of actors who have died. When actors die during a movie production, a digital clone of the actor can be synthesized using past footage, photos, and voice recordings to mimic the real person in order to continue the movie production.[4]

Modern artificial intelligence, has allowed for the creation of deepfakes. This involves manipulation of a video to the point where the person depicted in the video is saying or performing actions he or she may not have consented to.[5] In April 2018, BuzzFeed released a deepfake video of Jordan Peele, which was manipulated to depict former President, Barack Obama, making statements he has previously not made in public to warn the public against the potential dangers of deepfakes.[6]

In addition to deepfakes, companies such as Intellitar now allows one to easily create a digital clone of themselves by feeding a series of images and voice recordings. This essentially creates digital immortality, allowing loved ones to interact with representations of those who died.[7] Digital cloning not only allows one to digitally memorialize their loved ones, but they can also be used to create representations of historical figures and be used in an educational setting.

With the development of various technology, as mentioned above, there are numerous concerns that arises, including identity theft, data breaches, and other ethical concerns. One of the issues with digital cloning is that there are little to no legislations to protect potential victims against these possible problems.[8]

  1. ^ Floridi, Luciano (2018). "Artificial Intelligence, Deepfakes and a Future of Ectypes". Philosophy & Technology. 31 (3): 317–321. doi:10.1007/s13347-018-0325-3.
  2. ^ Borel, Brooke (2018). "Clicks, Lies and Videotape". Scientific American. 319 (4): 38–43. Bibcode:2018SciAm.319d..38B. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1018-38. PMID 30273328. S2CID 52902634.
  3. ^ a b Truby, Jon; Brown, Rafael (2021). "Human digital thought clones: the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence for big data". Information and Communication Technology Law. 30 (2): 140–168. doi:10.1080/13600834.2020.1850174. hdl:10576/17266. S2CID 229442428. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
  4. ^ Beard, Joseph (2001). "CLONES, BONES AND TWILIGHT ZONES: Protecting the Digital Persona of the Quick, the Dead and the Imaginary". Berkeley Technology Law Journal. 16 (3): 1165–1271. JSTOR 24116971.
  5. ^ Allen, Anita (2016). "Protecting One's Own Privacy In a Big Data Economy". Harvard Law Review. 130 (2): 71–86.
  6. ^ Silverman, Craig (April 2018). "How To Spot A Deepfake Like The Barack Obama–Jordan Peele Video". Buzzfeed.
  7. ^ Meese, James (2015). "Posthumous Personhood and the Affordances of Digital Media". Mortality. 20 (4): 408–420. doi:10.1080/13576275.2015.1083724. hdl:10453/69288. S2CID 147550696.
  8. ^ Nemitz, Paul Friedrich (2018). "Constitutional Democracy and Technology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 59 (9): 20180089. Bibcode:2018RSPTA.37680089N. doi:10.1098/rsta.2018.0089. PMID 30323003.