MetaHuman

How Can You Live Free When you Can't Believe Your Own Eyes? by: Joe Allen 2021-03-02 Source: We the People Convention This App Will Soon Unleash Deepfake Videos That Can Frame Anyone and deceive EVERYONE! MetaHuman Creator lets any dummy create deepfakes for fun. Before long, only a fool will believe anything he sees online. By Joe Allen, March 2, 2021 Epic Games just released the first demos for MetaHuman Creator, bringing us one step closer to living in a simulation. The cloud-based app has an intuitive interface, allowing minimally competent users to create ultra-realistic digital humans “in less than an hour, without compromising on quality.” Just as Pro Tools gave burnouts the power to make techno, or PhotoShop let perverts alter celebrity images, soon anyone with a decent laptop will be able to generate a deepfake. It’s gonna be hilarious—at first. MetaHuman Creator was developed for Unreal Engine, a top platform for game design, film effects, and live event production. The package allows users to build detailed humanoids for 2D videos or immersive virtual environments. Best of all, it’s so easy, any amateur can do it. If you’re a talentless game animator or a dating app con artist, now is your time to shine. MetaHuman’s first generation of digital androids is about as creepy as you’d imagine, if only because their presentation is so natural. Their facial movements mimic genuine emotions. Watching the demos, you’ll notice tiny pores, subtle wrinkles, hints of tooth crud, and even peach fuzz catching the backlight. The facial palette offers a wide range of skin tones, hairstyles, and bone structures. The creation process begins with a generic face that’s molded like mortal clay. The results are truly remarkable. Unreal Engine explains in a news release: “MetaHuman Creator…works by drawing from an ever-growing library of variants of human appearance and motion, and enabling you to create convincing new characters through intuitive workflows.” Click Here to Watch the Newest We the People Convention News & Opinion Podcast! You can make your digital humans fat or skinny, tow-headed or bald, hot or homely. You can give them a button nose or a big ol’ honker. You can place them anywhere on the gender spectrum, dress them up like digital dolls, and make them say whatever you like. Ultimately, this software will democratize deepfakes. It starts with innocent pranks, and ends in international scandals. As the fakes pile up, normal people will increasingly approach media with schizoid skepticism—a trend well underway. Any video evidence a person wants to ignore can be dismissed as a “deepfake.” The inevitable explosion of phony content will also strengthen our self-designated “legitimate news sources” as the sole arbiters of what is real. If it gets bad enough, we might need a federal Reality Czar to sort it all out. In a Phony World, You’ve Gotta Fake It to Make It MetaHumans Creator is part of a natural progression. Digital humans will thrive in an era of fake news, fake revolutions, fake insurrections, fake photos with invented quotes, fake memes with bogus statistics, fake hate crimes, fake bosoms, fake smiles, fake miracles, and an endless parade of phony celebrities. It was a short jump from Patty Duke to Philip K. Dick, and even shorter to presidential deepfakes. Perpetual doubt is just part of the New Normal. Leading up to the election, I heard multiple liberals claim that Hunter Biden’s leaked nude videos are nothing but a Russian deepfake. After all, who falls asleep with a crackpipe in his mouth? Some even insist that his abandoned laptop never existed. After viewing a few clips for myself on GTV.org, let’s just say I’m skeptical of their skepticism. Believe it or not, Joe Biden’s son has some serious issues. But lefties aren’t the only ones losing their grip. In the aftermath of the “deadly insurrection” on Capitol Hill, I heard equally crazy claims on the right. On the night of Jan. 7, Trump released a poorly shot video from the White House. In it, the president condemned the rioters and called for unity. Immediately, some otherwise sane people insisted this was a deepfake. Some actually thought Trump was being held prisoner in some secret location. All this because his double chin looked weird sagging over his collar. They couldn’t believe their eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Later, a friend assured me, “It’s really not that crazy. Their fears were just a year or two early.” Who Will Fact-Check Our Reality Czar? In a world where everything smells like phony baloney, you can either use your own critical faculties, or turn to established authorities for answers. The problem is, when falsehoods reach a certain level of sophistication, we have to question our own perceptions. That’s why our rulers now demand we listen to them, and them alone. According to The New York Times, “several experts [have] recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a ‘reality czar.’“ Maybe they’ll elevate someone from the squalid pool of fact-checkers at CNN or PolitiFact. As the deepfakes keep coming, our catty Reality Czar will issue decrees like “Yes, Kamala Harris is really human” or “No, Biden can’t rap freestyle—but his son can.”