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Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

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Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#21

Post by CuriouslyC »

simonh wrote: post #12
daenz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? Like "you selected female, here is what females should look like." If gender is a social construct, tech like this is clearly maintaining that construct, yet nobody seems to have a…

Gender could be a benign or even beneficial social construct, if that’s what it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.

How would a lack of choice and the ability to self determine be positive?

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#22

Post by whuffman »

sirsuki wrote: post #5

Are there other online Machine Learning apps out there for this? Or is Snap-Chat the only one? I remember back in the VRML/SecondLife heyday where you could pick an avatar that was another gender. I still do that. But the emphasis for voice chat in modern games and MMORPGs make it far more difficult. A low gruff voice does not bode well coming from a feminine avatar. Catches too many off guard.

My company, Modulate, is building "voice skins" for exactly this purpose: customizing your voice in chat for online videogames!

It's a really interesting technical challenge. On the one hand, changing your timbre to another human voice is much more complicated than basic pitch shifting, so we ended up using deep neural networks for a kind of simultaneous speech-recognition and speech-synthesis approach (though training this system to preserve e.g. the emotional complexity of your input speech while still changing out the timbre convincingly is difficult - we use adversarial training on the raw audio waveform, which is powerful but also pretty much unknown territory compared to images).

On the other hand, it's important to run with very low latency on your device while you're playing, which means that we can't simply "throw the biggest network we can" at the problem. So we have a tradeoff between model latency, which is easy to characterize, and audio quality / voice skin plausibility, which is pretty ambiguous and subjective.

Finally, as this kind of tech improves the potential for misuse becomes an important problem, so we need to build in protections (like watermarking the audio) that can help prevent fraud while not compromising the speed of the algorithm or the quality of the output audio.

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#23

Post by Raphmedia »

daenz wrote: post #9
Raphmedia wrote: post #3

> I have a friend who does drag. It's a lot of work! I'm excited for technology like this, because it will make it easier for makeup & drag artists to experiment with new ideas and identities cheaply and quickly. Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Sometimes coming up with makeup ideas is hard since I l…

>Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? Like "you selected female, here is what females should look like." If gender is a social construct, tech like this is clearly maintaining that construct, yet nobody seems to have a…

> Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes?

They do. Even people that are not transgender might get stuck trying to reach a goal that is impossible. What I have is "Gender Dysphoria" because it is strongly linked to my gender identity. However, nobody is safe from "Body Dysmorphic Disorder". There has been a increase in people who go see plastic chirurgeons with such filters as reference images[1].

In my case, that's a wanted effect. By sticking to society's gender stereotypes I increase my ability to pass unnoticed. It is fine for women to not follow those stereotypes. There are strong women, women who like to dress in male clothing, women who wear punk haircuts, sit with their legs spread out, etc. The thing is, those habits often cause people to take notice. In their case, people would look and think "Oh, this woman is punk. I [love/hate] how it looks!". In my case, that's often "Oh god, there is a man in the girl's bathroom. Let's call security!".

I am aware of the stereotypes and hide behind them. That's not to say I never break them. In my daily life, I try to blend in. If I go to a bar and want to stand out? There's nothing stopping me from bending those rules. For example, my large shoulders that are a pain in my day to day life look amazing in studded leather coat.

[1] "Please Don’t Ask a Plastic Surgeon to Make You Look Like a Snapchat Filter" - http://fortune.com/2018/08/03/please-dont-ask-a-plastic-surg...

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#24

Post by ljcn »

the_watcher wrote: post #17

I don't usually pay attention to things like this, but I have a younger sister who uses Snapchat. She used this filter and the output was essentially a perfect photo of our brother, but with longer hair. I couldn't help but be impressed.

What about the brother -> sister mapping?

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#26

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #21
simonh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender could be a benign or even beneficial social construct, if that’s what it is, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing.

How would a lack of choice and the ability to self determine be positive?

You can't pick your ethinicity either, it just exists.

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#27

Post by daenz »

Raphmedia wrote: post #23
daenz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? Like "you selected female, here is what females should look like." If gender is a social construct, tech like this is clearly maintaining that construct, yet nobody seems to have a…

> Do you ever feel like these applications are re-enforcing physical gender stereotypes? They do. Even people that are not transgender might get stuck trying to reach a goal that is impossible. What I have is "Gender Dysphoria" because it is strongly linked to my gender identity. However, nobody is safe from "Body Dysmorphic Disorder". There has been a increase in people who go see plastic chirurgeons with such filte…

Interesting, I've never realized how much of it was just wanting to blend in with everyone else. I'm not transgender, but I also feel much less anxious when I'm not standing out, so I can definitely relate there. Thank you for explaining.

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#29

Post by Raphmedia »

zamalek wrote: post #20
Raphmedia wrote: post #3

> I have a friend who does drag. It's a lot of work! I'm excited for technology like this, because it will make it easier for makeup & drag artists to experiment with new ideas and identities cheaply and quickly. Similarly, I'm transgender and use those applications to come up with new ideas on how to make little changes to my appearance to feminize my features. Sometimes coming up with makeup ideas is hard since I l…

Isn't there also good to be had here, because it could normalize the concept of transgenderism, drag, etc.?

I've met quite a few people who told me that they questioned their gender identity after playing with such a filter.

That's a good thing, it allows people with an otherwise strong sense of their own gender identity to have a small glimpse into what a gender identity disorder could be like. For a cis person, this happens when an AI morph their features into the opposite gender. For a person with a gender identity disorder, this happen with regular mirrors. It's two very different experience, but the sour taste in your mouth is similar.

It is easier to have empathy for something you have experienced the tip of. Similar to how someone with a broken heart will be able to empathize with the struggles of someone with clinical depression.

Re: Fun with Snapchat's Gender Swapping Filter

#30

Post by Wowfunhappy »

whuffman wrote: post #22
sirsuki wrote: post #5

Are there other online Machine Learning apps out there for this? Or is Snap-Chat the only one? I remember back in the VRML/SecondLife heyday where you could pick an avatar that was another gender. I still do that. But the emphasis for voice chat in modern games and MMORPGs make it far more difficult. A low gruff voice does not bode well coming from a feminine avatar. Catches too many off guard.

My company, Modulate, is building "voice skins" for exactly this purpose: customizing your voice in chat for online videogames! It's a really interesting technical challenge. On the one hand, changing your timbre to another human voice is much more complicated than basic pitch shifting, so we ended up using deep neural networks for a kind of simultaneous speech-recognition and speech-synthesis approach (though traini…

> Finally, as this kind of tech improves the potential for misuse becomes an important problem, so we need to build in protections (like watermarking the audio) that can help prevent fraud while not compromising the speed of the algorithm or the quality of the output audio.

Legitamate question: (absolutely not rhetorical, I don't know the answer!)

What the potential misuse of a gender voice changer? If someone wants to change their perceived gender in a video game (presumably to avoid harassment), should that be detectable? If both genders should ideally receive identical treatment anyway, is there any harm in swapping?

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