News

Viral Chinese Face-Swapping App Under Fire Over Privacy Concerns

Raina Ee

2019-09-08 , 12:00 am

At some point of time, we all would have definitely been a huge crazy fan of Snapchat filters.

From the dog filter;

To the flower crown filter;

And most importantly, the face swap filter!

I’m not going to lie – I was definitely a huge fan of Snapchat filters.

While Snapchat has been the hype for a long time, there was a noticeable drop in its popularity, especially after Instagram launched the filter function for InstaStory.

But the decline in Snapchat users wasn’t the end of the “filter” culture.

FaceApp – The App That Changes Your Age

Earlier in July, 90% of my Facebook feed and even Instagram feed were flooded with people uploading a selfie of their own, with the caption “Me 50 years down the road”.

Or, “This is how I looked when I was a baby”

While this particular app, FaceApp, took the internet by storm, many media outlets have raised concerns over personal privacy.

Even our Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong warned us about it.

New App That Allows You To Swap Face With Celebrities

If you are envious of the looks of certain TV or film characters, ZAO may be the app for you.

The deepfake app is a Chinese app that allows users to swap their faces with famous celebrities or TV characters.

With everyone hoping to look like their favourite celebrities, and to try new cool technology stuff, the app rapidly became the country’s most downloaded app over the weekend.

What is “Deepfake”?

Deepfake is a technique that recreates a human appearance or voice through artificial intelligence.

According to whatis.techtarget, deepfake is capable of producing or altering content such that it presents something that did not occur.

While it may appear to be a really cool technology advancement, this technique can be really dangerous and can pose a threat to our privacy as it can spread misinformation or damage our reputation.

On Fire Over Privacy Issue

While the ZAO app experienced a surge in popularity after its launch, users have started noticing one of the terms stated under the app’s terms and conditions.

In the user agreement, it is stated that consumers who have uploaded their images to the app agree to surrender the intellectual property rights to their face, and permits ZAO to use their images for marketing purposes.

To surrender the intellectual property rights of WHAT? ZAO must be mad.

With the growing concerns over the app and deepfake technology, ZAO has posted on Weibo stating that they are working on the concerns that their users have and have also changed their terms to clarify that users’ headshots or videos will only be used to improve the app.

Technology Is A Double-Edge Sword

I had hoped that after all the drama that happened regarding Facebook’s data leak, people would have realized that technology can be quite a danger to us if we are careless.

Except that my hope was dashed, because despite the privacy concerns of ZAO, the app’s popularity is not affected.

Quoting ChannelNewsAsia, critics have warned that technology does have a negative effect as they can be used to manipulate elections, defame someone, or spark unrest by spreading misinformation.

So to all my Goody Feed readers, please be careful of everything that you put online as they can be misused by others, okay?