TikTok just dropped a new realistic beauty filter

My 2c: it’s the beginning of the end for some tech areas. Especially social networks.

You chat with people online because you think, you know, that people exist on the other side.

You spend time on instagram, tiktok, and so, to get a glimpse of real people (as opposed to TV where a lot is fiction/sfx).

You trust photos because, barring dedicated, time-consuming and skill-intensive editing, they should represent reality.

If that’s not true anymore, and everything is fiction, it’s probably time to get back to IRL experiences.

We are so close to this reality. I made this TikTok video through a workflow of Stable Diffusion (Python), DeepCQ/Finclout, ElevnLabs, and Di-D. And if I with my limited ability can reach this level, someone with more able hands (and budget) can reach much higher levels of reality. Social as we know it is dead. But then, if you look at TikTok it boils down to Boobs, Quizzes, and Twitter screenshots.

(1) https://www.tiktok.com/@materialimpacts/video/72016630168390... (2) https://www.tiktok.com/@materialimpacts/video/72005808946403...

> And if I with my limited ability can reach this level, someone with more able hands (and budget) can reach much higher levels of reality.

So what?

People have been making fictional motion pictures for over 120 years. What does Peter Jackson's, or Spike Jonze's, or your ability to make a computer-generated person appear in a video have to do with 'social is dead'?

Are you concerned that people might make videos of things that aren't truthful? The film camera, and the radio have been lying to us for over a century. The written word has been lying to us even longer, and the spoken word since time immemorial. All of this... Isn't exactly a novel development.

Do you think that 'influencer media' was somehow a more authentic form of communication than those other forms of media? If so, why?

Once it becomes cheap enough to make indistinguishable fake online personas, there will be a flood of commercial, spam, and scam accounts that make it impossible to know who among your online connections is real and who isn’t.

It’s not about a cool looking ogre or background actor, it’s about a sudden inversion of signal:noise ratio for all online interactions

Obviously, you’ll still have your direct connections to people you know and trust to be real, and maybe some enjoyable “are they a bot??” interactions, but the social network experience that’s been around for the last 15 years will probably be over within the next 5.

> Once it becomes cheap enough to make indistinguishable fake online personas, there will be a flood of commercial, spam, and scam accounts that make it impossible to know who among your online connections is real and who isn’t.

Unless you have a personal, out-of-band relationship with that person, it has already been impossible to know that.