Episode Details

CVS launches "Beauty Mark," its truth-in-advertising campaign; while AI is generating plausibly "real faces." Meanwhile, companies like SuperPersonal are putting customers into model try-on videos. Have "deep fakes" - AI algorithms that map faces and micro-expressions onto stock footage - come to retail? How can they help? How can they hurt?

Show Notes:

Main Takeaways:

• Brian and Phillip are podcasting live from #Shoptalk2019!

• Deep fakes are getting a little too real to be comfortable.

• Personal body mapping for try-on is becoming a reality.

• Can companies figure out how to keep their data in-house?

Who's Waldo: Can Humans Even Spot Deep Fakes Anymore?

• Deep fakes are becoming more and more realistic, and it's getting creepy.

• Future Commerce was ahead of the curve in starting to discuss the phenomenon of deep fakes, which became a buzzword in 2017 when anonymous Reddit users began to use AI to map video streams of celebrities faces onto pornographic images.

• Deep fakes have moved beyond the original use-case, and have also been used in political situations, which can have serious implications, especially as deep fakes are getting harder and harder to distinguish.

• Also: an effort to combat photoshopped images and promote body positivity, CVS has launched a truth-in-advertising campaign called Beauty Mark, that puts a watermark on all untouched photos, and forces outside brands to identify any untouched images in their promotional campaigns.

• There are plenty of start-ups that have sprung up around this phenomenon, one being Truepic, an image-authentication company dedicated to combatting fake social media accounts, doctored photos as well as deep fakes.

• Want to be even more creeped out by all of this? There's a former Uber developer who has come up with a fake-face generator, and the images are a little too close for comfort.

• And just in case all of this isn't bad enough, here's a "deep fake" image of Steve Buscemi's face on Scarlett Johansen's body at an award's show.

Personalization in 2020: Turning Regular People Into Models:

• Personalization, especially in retail has become a theme of 2019, and the tech is finally catching up.

• Phillip says that while most virtual try on applications are not very good, Warby Parker has changed the game.

• Warby Parker's AR powered virtual try on is so good, it's almost like looking in a mirror, and they are using the same depth map as Apple's facial recognition software for iPhone.

• Another company that's working to change the virtual try-on experience is SuperPersonal, an AI-powered virtual dressing room experience that would allow retailers to "multiply e-commerce photography to account for different ethnicities, skin-c