I was recently looking for designers for my company when I came across an interesting profile on Dribbble. I reached out and quickly scheduled a time when we could talk over zoom. At the meeting time, in comes this person who seems to have a strange-looking, silicone-like face. I was using my Zoom account (I rarely use other peoples zooms unless I trust them), to avoid situations like this. One thing I noticed is that when the candidate touched their face, their fingers would appear to sink into their skin - almost as if it were made of liquid. Secondly, their face appeared larger, lighter and smoother than their neck. I got spooked an immediately let the candidate know that I was not comfortable moving forward.
More interestingly, what exactly are them mechanics of getting a deep fake into video call? How is it possible that a what seems like a deepfake could make its way into my Zoom? Is Zoom enabling external plugins that alter video details?
It’s fairly trivial to have a virtual camera source and point Zoom to that as it’s input. It has nothing to do with integrating deeply with Zoom or getting “into” your Zoom. Check out Snap Camera[0] for an example.
I do very much hope that you told the candidate what spooked you. Ideally, you would have done this early in the interview, giving them a chance to disable any video filtering / face-beautifying software that they may have been running.
If you didn't do either one of those, perhaps you now know enough so that next time you will be able to give the interviewee a chance to demonstrate whether or not they're using a "Smooth over my facial blemishes because I'm uncomfortable with how my face looks and want it to look 'prettier'." filter.
The live-streaming software OBS has a “virtual webcam” feature that can make a generated video feed behave like a hardware webcam. Perhaps something similar is being used to feed generated video into zoom?
Input for software can be anything. Camera feed can be a generated one and the software consuming it doesn't have to be aware it isn't a real physical camera.
Admittedly, I use it, but I have it set pretty low. My face isn't lit up very well, and without it, in my webcam, my skin ends up looking a lot rougher than it really is.
If I set it to the max, then it just looks like a blurry mess.
Things like OBS (streaming software) can create a virtual camera. I am guessing its something like that where Zoom does not even know the camera is not actually real hardware.
More interestingly, what exactly are them mechanics of getting a deep fake into video call? How is it possible that a what seems like a deepfake could make its way into my Zoom? Is Zoom enabling external plugins that alter video details?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4hf9c9kg52nxal0/Screen%20Shot%2020...