A Pythonista's Approach to DeepFakes

Navin Pai (~navin57)


Description:

Introduction

DeepFakes is “an AI-based human image synthesis technique used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos”. It shot to prominence in late 2017 on forums like Reddit, and have been a topic of debate, both from a technical as well as an ethical standpoint since they first came out.

In this talk, we explore how DeepFakes works purely from a Python coder's perspective to answer Why and How and What we can do about it.

This talk is an "_light-on-math, high on code_" talk on how anyone can generate Deepfakes-like videos using off-the-shelf tools and frameworks such as PyTorch, ffmpeg, OpenCV among others. This technique borrows heavily from ideas originally described by the creator of the Deepfakes method on Reddit _(and ideas borrowed from a paper by Nvidia)_.

This talk is not a deep-dive into Deep Learning. It's a specific problem statement that we are looking to solve using the tools we have available to us. We'll focus on similar problems and similar domains since we want to spend more time talking about code and the problem itself than about nitty-gritties of DL or arguing about which frameworks/tools to use.

Overview

  • Introduction to DeepFakes (2-3 mins)
  • Why Deep Learning? (3-4 mins) _(Can skip this if we have some other speaker doing a basic intro to DL techniques)_
  • How traditional face-swapping CGI has worked (3 mins)
    • Why Deep Learning is a great fit for this problem (1.5 min)
  • Breaking down the problem into components (2 mins)
  • Data Generation w/ code (2 mins)
  • Intro to AutoEncoders w/ code (2-3 mins)
  • Training + code (2-3 mins)
  • Building a pipeline (4 mins) _(If I don't have to concentrate on Introduction, I'll increase this part to dive a little deeper)_
    • Common problems + Problems I faced and getting past them (2 mins)
  • Ethicality (1.5-2 mins)
  • Current State of the Art + Where do we go from here (2 mins)
  • Questions (~5 mins)

Should you attend?

You should attend if:

  • You are interested in understanding what all the hype about Deepfakes is about
  • You are interested in CGI
  • You want to know how they created Hulk in Marvel movies (and brought back Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars)
  • The words ffmpeg, opencv, pytorch peek your interest
  • Want to look at a specific use case of Python in the field of Deep Learning and clarify some ideas along the way

Do not attend if:

  • You expect to learn DL from a 30 minute talk
  • You are a DL practitioner expecting a discussion on research papers for 30 mins
  • You don't like looking at code in talks

Prerequisites:

  • Basic working knowledge of Python, and an open mind.

  • Understanding of Deep Learning is helpful but not necessary. The talk isn't math heavy, or intended purely for DL folks, and I'll be abstracting concepts out to allow non-DL practitioners to follow along.

  • In the talk, I'll also touch upon a bunch of tools like OpenCV and ffmpeg, but no knowledge of those is required.

Content URLs:

[WIP] Slide Deck: https://navinpai.github.io/pycon-deepfakes/

Also, I presented a more general, less Python-focussed talk on the same topic at ExpertTalks Pune. Video of the same is available on Youtube (_though only parts of the talk will be common since the audience is pretty different_)

Speaker Info:

Navin “M@dMAx” Pai is a code monkey from Goa. He graduated from Goa Engineering College, and completed his M.Tech at IIIT-Bangalore where he majored in AI and ML. He's currently part of Tact.AI, building an AI-powered platform for B2B sales workflows. He enjoys dabbling across tech stacks for a living and some of his more "fun" experiments have resulted in brilliant results such as shorted motherboards, burnt RAMs, and a $1000+ AWS bill from a unattended cluster.

He has previously spoken at a bunch of conferences (_including NullCon, ExpertTalks, Anthill Inside_) and won multiple hackathons (_organized by MakeMyTrip, ICICI, IBM Watson, Wayray among others_). He's also conducted introductory courses (_mostly on Python/Machine Learning_) at multiple colleges over the years.

In his free time, he enjoys talking about himself from a third person perspective in Speaker Info sections of conference CFP submissions.

Speaker Links:

Website: https://lifeofnav.in

Github: https://github.com/navinpai

Twitter: https://twitter.com/navinpai

Section: Data Science, Machine Learning and AI
Type: Talks
Target Audience: Intermediate
Last Updated: