Exploring Positive Use Cases of Deepfakes Through Training and Public Speaking

Friday - November 3 2023, 12:28 UTC - 1 year ago

New research from the University of Bath finds that watching a training video featuring a deepfake version of yourself makes learning faster, easier and more enjoyable than watching videos featuring someone else. The study looks into two separate experiments that explore the positive use cases for deepfakes for fitness training and public speaking.

Watching a training video featuring a deepfake version of yourself, as opposed to a clip featuring somebody else, makes learning faster, easier and more fun, according to new research led by the REVEAL research center at the University of Bath.This finding was seen over two separate experiments, one exploring fitness training and the other involving public speaking. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

A deepfake is a video where a person's face or body has been digitally altered so they appear to be someone else. This technology receives highly negative press due to its potential to spread political misinformation and to maliciously develop pornographic content that superimposes the face of one person on the body of another. It also poses an existential threat to professionals in the creative industries.

Dr. Christof Lutteroth and Dr. Christopher Clarke, both from the Department of Computer Science at Bath and co-authors of the new study, say their findings present two positive use cases for deepfakes, and hope their findings catalyze more research into ways deepfake can be applied to do good in the world.

"Deepfakes are used a lot for nefarious purposes, but our research suggests that FakeForward (the name used by the researchers to describe the use of deepfake to teach a new skill) is an unexplored way of applying the technology so it adds value to people's lives by supporting and improving their performances," said Dr. Clarke.

Dr. Lutteroth added, "From this study, it's clear that deepfake has the potential to be really exciting for people. By following a tutorial where they act as their own tutor, people can immediately get better at a task—it's like magic." .

More reps, greater enjoyment .

For the fitness experiment, study participants were asked to watch a training video featuring a deepfake of their own face pasted over the body of a more advanced exerciser.

The researchers chose six exercises (planks, squats, wall squats, sit-ups, squat jumps and press-ups), each targeting a different muscle group and requiring different types of movement.

For each exercise, study participants first watched a video tutorial where a model demonstrated the exercise, and then had a go at repeating the exercise themselves. The model was chosen both to resemble the participant and to outperform them, though their skill level was attainable to the test subject.

The process of watching the video and mimicking the exercise was also performed using a deepfake instructor, where the participant's own face was superimposed on a model's body.

For both conditions, the researchers measured the number of repetitions, or the time participants were able to hold an exercise.

Credit: University of Bath .

For all exercises, regardless of the order in which the videos were watched, participants performed better after watching the video of "themselves," compared to watching a video showing someone else.

"Deepfake was a really powerful tool," said Dr. Lutteroth. "Immediately people could do more press-ups or whatever it was they were being asked to do. Most also said they enjoyed the experience and felt more motivated to take part afterwards".

The team then repeated the experiment using a presentation in front of a video camera as a way for participants to learn a new public speaking skill. Participants had to deliver a presentation based on a given topic and the results were assessed by a pre-trained algorithm that analyzed verbal fluency, body language, and the overall impression created.

Again, the researchers found an advantage of using a deepfake over a standard video of someone else speaking. The results showed that participants who watch a deepfake version of themselves performed better and were more confident during their presentation.