Synthetic Media is a piece of media, be it video, image, audio, text, that has either been modified or manipulated using artificial intelligence algorithms or has entirely been created using artificial intelligence algorithms. This includes Deepfake videos, speech synthesis, style transfer, photo restoration, colourisation, text generation, voice cloning, music generation, etc. In the past few years, Synthetic Media has gotten very popular. This is because the technology that is used to create synthetic media has progressed almost exponentially in recent years. The tools required to make this kind of media have become so accessible that anyone with a decently modern computer or even a smartphone can easily create synthetic media with little to no technical knowledge required. It is not just that this technology has become more accessible but it has also become much more realistic and convincing at the same time. One of the most significant innovations in this technology came in 2014, when Ian Goodfellow, a deep learning researcher, released a new machine learning system called Generative Adversarial Networks or GAN. This completely changed how these algorithms worked and how they were designed. Ever since this point, progress in this field has constantly and consistently been advancing. This technology is now nearing maturity, and its capabilities are growing day by day, but we are yet to use this technology meaningfully in any large scale applications. It is time that we scale up and utilise this groundbreaking technology to our advantage in the industry. Complex Tasks that usually take several months to complete even with industry-leading hardware and a massive team of animators can be completed in mere minutes using this technology. Artists and Animators can use this technology to do all the repetitive and monotonous tasks while devoting all of their time and power towards the creative part of the process. As a downside of this, mainstream adoption of this technology would also lead people in the industry to lose their jobs as they become redundant. However, it will also help remove barriers to entry into the media industry, leading to many independent animators and artists coming into the industry. Many novice animators are often unable to pursue their interests in this field because of a lack of high-end equipment and because of the fact that they would have to do each task of the process themselves since they do not have a proper team of artists working with/for them. This technology would allow them to pursue their passion and show the world their creativity by removing these requirements. In conclusion, I believe that this is a really promising technology that has the potential to completely change the media industry as we know it. All that is left is to implement it.
10 Jan 2022
Akshat Bhatnagar
