AI created faces; what are they?
These days there is an ever increasing need to keep the identity of staff hidden from digital traffic. In the old days this was done through removal of pictures of staff against organization schematics and was never really needed as all systems were air-gapped; a cybercriminal would have found it exceptionally difficult to get from the outside low level green zone to an orange and red zone in most organizations. Even if cybercriminals did make it into a system, very little in terms of sensitive content such as personnel details, contact lists were kept on a network device, with many still opting to local storage and backup. This soon became unacceptable as data became the staple of the company as technology advanced, this became centralized. While companies use either an internal centralized server system or a cloud-based solution, data is now easier than ever to access.
Identity theft is also a major challenge as records could be sold to underground markets and parties that want to conduct some form of exploitation or espionage. AI created faces help reduce the risk of such individuals being able to use facial recognition systems or enter a building with false ID due AI creating a real-time or static image of the user and the biometrics changed to hide the person’s identity. This is important for social media posts that need a professional picture of a representative of the company but without the biometric data. A face instead of a placeholder helps impart trust in the reader of a post and help empathize with the company; this is based on natural behavior and key to sells and client relations, as such a face has the power to make or break your business.
AI created faces are quick and easy to make with some businesses even adopting a monthly change to these static avatars to ensure ambiguity is maintained during communications on various company and marketing platforms.
A synthetic version of you
In addition to static images, conference call software with addon software can use AI to first find the features of each user and map these to dynamic computer-generated images based on a static image on each frame in real time. This is part of synthetic media used to create both a professional representation of you with added security. Synthetic media avatars can move as the AI remaps new frame based meshes to the camera view transmitted to other users. The same software can also map other avatars to a user, such as a corporate mascot or representation of key officials in the business that may need to be on multiple calls at once. Again, all avatars are slightly modified to still look like a person but be different enough to stop frames from being used for biometric card data or other identity theft. As such synthetic media is quickly being adopted by industry.
Stopping Criminals
Synthetic media can be thought of as taking the idea of using a faux background on remote conference calls and abstracting this false representation further to the user of the conference call software. If a conference call is ever monitored by cybercriminals with synthetic media being used with all internal conference call staff having switched their avatars all to the CEO of the company it would make it much more difficult to understand what was being communicated by whom while protecting each individual’s facial biometric data and general identity. This reduces the risk of social engineering occurring on a corporate site and risk of false RF IDs being created from passive scanning of workers as they enter or exit the site. Tracking synthetic media users in the after hours to find out where they live could also be a useful deterrent for criminals and help keep employee families safe.