Tag: Media

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Plex’s secret weapon: cross-media integrations

Plex’s expansion beyond a home media organizer to becoming a centralized platform for all your media, gives the company a distinct advantage. By tying all media together under one roof — streaming music, podcasts, web shows and video of all sorts — Plex is able to add interesting and unique features around personalization and recommendations.

We’re only beginning to see some of the results of these sorts of integrations now.

To start, Plex today is leveraging its TIDAL music partnership to highlight which songs appear in a TV show, episode or movie they’re watching. Currently, this works for library content only, but Plex told TechCrunch at CES this week that the feature soon will work for AVOD [ad-supported video on demand] content as well shows and movies recorded to their cloud DVR via a digital antenna.

In the months ahead, Plex will begin to roll out more cross-media integrations, it says.

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Media streamer Plex to add subscription channels, rentals and more

Plex in December launched its own ad-supported streaming service in over 200 countries, where it functions as a competitor to The Roku Channel, Tubi, Crackle and other places that offer free-to-stream content without a subscription. While the company will continue to develop and expand its ad-supported product, it’s also looking ahead to what comes next. And that includes adding subscription video, a transactional marketplace for rentals and purchases, and a way to launch streaming content Plex can’t host — like the shows and movies available on mainstream streaming services.

The question for Plex is not whether or not it wants to offer these features to its users, but rather which ones it should focus on first. Some may arrive this year, in fact.

Plex has always desired to become a sort of one-stop-shop for all your media. That began with its software for organizing your personal media collections, then grew to include a live TV streaming service for cord-cutters with their own antenna, plus a cloud DVR, access to podcasts, web shows, streaming music from TIDAL, and now an ad-supported catalog.

But a lot of what users today want to stream requires a fee. That’s where Plex’s next set of features will come in.

In some cases, connecting Plex users to premium content can be handled by way of subscription channel add-ons, similar to Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, Apple TV Channels, or The Roku Channel’s subscriptions. For example, a user who wanted to discover and watch content on HBO from inside Plex could purchase a subscription through the Plex platform. (Plex hasn’t confirmed subscription partners — HBO is just an example).

In other cases — such as with streamers like Netflix, perhaps — Plex would have to link out to the show or movie, as the service doesn’t allow third-party platforms to distribute its content. This “deep linking” feature, as it’s called, would allow you to search for and discover shows and movies from within Plex, then play them wherever they were available.

This could function similar to something like Reelgood, a streaming dashboard where you can browse, search, then watch TV and movies from Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Prime Video, and dozens more services.

plex desktop movies 1024x659

 

Then for those movies and shows that aren’t available by way of subscription services, a transactional marketplace could fill in the gaps, allowing Plex users to rent or buy the content they want to watch.

Valory says Plex is currently planning to focus first on its existing ad-supported streaming product and subscription video, with deep linking to follow. But the actual launch order could change based on numerous factors, including user feedback.

Ideally, however, deep linking features won’t be developed until Plex feels its core ad-supported library of content is robust. Today, Plex is working with over 40 content partners for its ad-supported library, but has only ingested around 5,000 of the 40,000 total titles available through its deals.

“We want to have a critical mass of content available before we have the deep linking capabilities,” noted Plex CEO Keith Valory, speaking to TechCrunch at CES. “But if those deep linking opportunities present themselves earlier, we’re also optimistic. If we can make a feature relatively easy for users and they love it, that’s what we as a company have always done.”

 

Plus, Plex’s work to establish relationships with content partners will make the subscription offering easier to push forward.

“Through the process of doing these deals with the AVOD [ad-supported video on demand] partners — [we found] a lot of those same companies have their own SVOD [subscription video on demand] channels they would like to deliver through us, or have a strong desire to have their content included in some types of either linear or SVOD bundles,” added Valory.

Plex says it would like to put together a set of 15 to 20 SVOD channels to choose from, when it makes subscriptions available on its platform. Big names like HBO and Showtime could easily be included in this group, as they’re fairly agreeable to distribution deals of this nature.

The time frame to launch for some of the planned features could be as soon as this year, in fact.

With a variety of content under one roof, Plex’s unique advantage is how it can provide cross-media recommendations — like suggesting a podcast about a TV show or a web show about a movie’s actor, for instance. And if and when deep linking goes live, Plex could potentially be the dashboard for the increasingly fractured streaming industry which is set to add new players in 2020 including HBO Max, NBCU’s Peacock, Quibi and more.

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Quibi lands a stop-motion series from ‘Rick & Morty’ creator Justin Roiland

Forthcoming streaming service Quibi has been announcing a steady stream of star-studded shows, and its latest is no exception: Rick & Morty creator Justin Roiland will be co-creating a show called ‘Gloop World’ for the service.

Gloop World will be a stop-motion animation, featuring clay models for that classic ‘claymation’ vibe popularized by the iconic Gumby in the 1950s. This new Quibi series will focus on two “anthropomorphic blobs” and their “strangely relatable lives,” according to a press release announcing the news.

Along with Roiland, the show is co-developed by John Harvatine IV and Eric Towner, and it’s produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, which counts Towner and Harvatine IV as founding members, along with Seth Green. Stoopid Buddy Stoodios also produced Robot Chicken – another modern claymation comedy classic.

Like some of the other Quibi projects that have been announced thus far, the pedigree of Gloop World sounds fantastic on paper. We don’t have much longer to wait now to see what it will be like – Quibi launches on April 6 this year.

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TiVo announces a $49.99 device that combines streaming and live TV

TiVo is announcing a new device at the Consumer Electronics Show called the TiVo Stream 4K, which CEO Dave Shull described as launching the company “full on into the streaming wars.”

Shull said the device is a “tiny little HDMI puck” that’s designed to reach a much broader group than the existing TiVo customer base, providing both streaming and live TV content to cord cutters and cord shavers.

“We believe for users that see value in live TV, which is the majority of American households, they want something to unify and marry the worlds of live TV and streaming, instead of having separate set top boxes or separate apps,” added VP of Product Chris Thun.

The streaming side will include integrations with services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO and others, and will also include content from TiVo+, the free, ad-supported movie and TV service that the company launched last fall.

In fact, TiVo is also announcing the addition of 23 new channels to TiVo+, bringing the total count to 49. Those channels include a new News category with channels like USA Today, Cheddar and Top Stories by Newsy. GQ, Glamour, Wired, Tastemade, Bon Appetit, Funny or Die and The Chive are also launching new channels.

Meanwhile, on the live TV side, the TiVo Stream 4K will include live TV and cloud DVR through integration with Sling TV.

The streaming wars to come

As Thun showed me via demo video, once you’ve logged in to your various services, the device will allow you to navigate based on shows and movies, rather than hopping between different apps. It’s something that other streaming platforms like Roku and Apple TV also offer, but Thun noted that this takes advantage of TiVo’s personalization capabilities,  drawing on what he said is a wider range of knowledge about consumer preferences than any individual app has access to.

“The personalization theme underlines the entire product,” he said. “Across these carousels, it’s really using machine learning and AI to push the right movies and shows to me at the right time.”

TiVo says the Stream 4K (which is built on top of the Android TV operating system, and also includes a remote with voice control) will be available starting in April, with initial launch pricing of $49.99. And the company will  be working with cable and internet providers to offer the device to their broadband-only customers, with Schurz Communications signed up as the first co-marketing partner.

“We have the puck, but ideally I want this solution to be ubiquitous and embedded in every single device,” Shull said.

A former Weather Channel CEO, Shull joined TiVo as CEO back in May of 2019. In an interview about his vision for the company, he told me that he want to “embrace the chaos” of streaming by bringing “all this entertainment together — on-demand, live, digital — and make it fun to find, to watch TV again.”

Last month, the company announced a $3 billion merger with licensing company Xperi.

“This transformation for TiVo enabled the merger,” Shull said.

CES 2020 coverage - TechCrunch

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Netflix and Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Goop Lab’ will launch on January 24

“The Goop Show,” an upcoming reality series co-hosted by Gwyneth Paltrow and tied to her lifestyle company Goop, now has a launch date and a trailer.

Goop has faced many accusations of promoting and selling pseudoscience — most notoriously, perhaps, in selling jade eggs for vaginas — and it seems like the series is embracing the site’s reputation, as it will feature what Netflix calls “boundary-pushing wellness topics.”

In fact, the company also released an eyebrow-raising poster today, with the tagline “reach new depths.”

And if you watch the trailer, you’ll see that the topics will include energy healing, psychedelics, cold therapy, psychic mediums and orgasms. At one point, Goop’s chief content officer Elise Loehnen (who’s co-hosting with Paltrow) declares, “What we try to do at Goop is explore ideas that may seem out there or too scary.”

The show was first announced in February 2019. It will premiere on January 24.

This may also be a good time to remind people of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ remarks last year, in response to questions about the decision to pull an episode of Hasan Minaj’s “Patriot Act” in Saudi Arabia: “We’re not in the truth to power business, we’re in the entertainment business.”

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YouTube starts limiting ad targeting and data collection on kids content

YouTube now officially limits the amount of data it and creators can collect on content intended for children, following promises made in November and a costly $170 million FTC fine in September. Considering how lucrative kids’ content is for the company, this could have serious financial ramifications for both it and its biggest creators.

The main change is, as announced in November, that for all content detected or marked as being for kids, viewers will be considered children no matter what. Even if you’re a verified, paying YouTube Premium customer (we know you’re out there) your data will be sanitized as if YouTube thinks you’re a 10-year-old kid.

Children’s privacy costs just $170 million for Google in settlement with the FTC

There are plenty of reasons for this, most of them to do with avoiding liability. It’s just the safer path for the company to make the assumption that anyone viewing kids’ content is a kid — but it comes with unfortunate consequences.

Reduced data collection means no targeted ads. And targeted ads are much more valuable than ordinary ones. So this is effectively a huge revenue hit to anyone making children’s content — for instance YouTube’s current top-earning creator, Ryan Kaji (a kid himself).

It also limits the insights creators can have on their viewers, crucial information for anyone hoping to understand their demographics and improve their metrics. Engagement drivers like comments and notifications are also disabled, to channels’ detriment.

Google for its part says that it is “committed to helping creators navigate this new landscape and to supporting our ecosystem of family content.” How exactly it plans to do that isn’t clear; Many have already complained that the system is not clear and that this could be a death sentence for kids’ channels on YouTube.

Now that the policy is official we’ll probably soon hear exactly how it is impacting creators and what if anything Google actually does to mitigate that.

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Fire TV Edition expands to more soundbars, plus cars, cable boxes and more

Amazon’s Fire TV Edition, the version of Fire TV that now powers over 150 Fire TV Edition smart TVs as a competitor to Roku TV, is expanding to more devices besides just the television. Today, Amazon announced a new Fire TV Edition that’s capable of powering soundbars and being integrated into autos, plus versions designed for operators and certified solution providers.

The company’s ambitions for Fire TV to become a more expansive platform were already known. Amazon this past fall introduced a new Fire TV soundbar and over a dozen new Fire TV Edition products, in order to better compete with Roku which at the time had gained a lead over Amazon in U.S. connected TV market share.

Fire TV’s steady expansion on the international front now continues. Since September 2019, more than 50 Fire TV Edition smart TVs and soundbars have been launched from brands including Grundig, JVC, Onida, and Anker, and from retailers like Best Buy, Dixons and, soon, MediaMarketSaturn. And Best Buy alone has sold “millions” of Insignia and Toshiba Fire TV Edition smart TVs, Amazon claims.

In 2020, Amazon says more brands will launch Fire TV Edition smart TVs in the U.S., Canada, India, the U.K., Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Mexico, but didn’t announce the brand names involved.

Amazon is also now expanding its lineup of Fire TV Edition-powered soundbars.

This fall, Amazon and Anker had launched the Nebula Soundbar – Fire TV Edition. Today, it’s launching two more: the TCL Alto 8+ Soundbar – Fire TV Edition on Amazon in the U.S. and Canada and the TCL TS8011 Soundbar – Fire TV Edition in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Both will offer support for Dolby Digital Plus for premium, dynamic and immersive sound, Amazon says.

Polk Audio and Tonly are also building soundbar solutions with Fire TV Edition. And later this year, Amazon’s Fire TV soundbar will be upgraded with Dolby Atmos support, device control, HDMI switching, and far-field voice control.

Also being introduced today are distinct versions of Fire TV for automakers, operators, and certified solution providers.

On the auto front, Amazon is partnering with BMW and Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA) to offer hands-free Alexa, touch screen interfaces and offline playback capabilities to the screens inside your car — meaning you can stream Prime Video, Amazon FreeTime, or even Netflix on the go using the vehicle’s Wi-Fi or LTE connection, a mobile hotspot, or any other internet-connected device.

“Adding Fire TV to future BMW vehicles represents a big step in bringing the best of streamed entertainment to our products. With Amazon’s approach, and with the help of Garmin, we are able to innovate and create a unique and special experience for BMW cars, providing the consistency of content and customer experience that Fire TV provides in the home. We look forward to working closely with Amazon to bring Fire TV to future vehicles,” noted Fathi El-Dwaik, Vice President User Interaction, Business Line My Car and Business Line My Life, BMW Group, in a statement about the integrations.

For operators, television and telco operators will be able to offer Fire TV Edition-powered devices to customers. This follows Amazon’s earlier partnerships with Tata Sky in India and Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent) in the U.S. With the launch of Fire TV Edition for operators, available now in North America, Europe, India, and Japan, companies can choose from a range of solutions to better address their own customer and business needs.

On the operator front, Amazon also announced it’s working with the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) to give its over 750 members the ability to deliver low-cost Fire TV streaming media players directly to their combined 16 million broadband and 8 million video customers.

Finally, Amazon is now customizing Fire TV Edition for ODMs (original device manufacturers — the companies building the hardware that will eventually be rebranded for other companies when sold).

Amazon announced it’s working with Skyworth as an ODM with turnkey solutions for 4K and FHD smart TVs. Starting in India, brands will be able to select from a range of industrial design and price points to bring their smart TVs to market. Meanwhile, for auto partners, Amazon is working with system integrators VOXX Automotive and Garmin.

The cumulative impact of all these expansions will be to give Fire TV a competitive advantage against rival Roku when it comes to establishing worldwide market share for its TV platform. But it additionally serves as means of bringing Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa to a wider user base and in places where Alexa isn’t always available — like the car or your cable TV box, for instance.

Related to this, Amazon also today announced more aftermarket devices with Alexa built-in for the car, and that Echo Auto will launch internationally this year.

“At CES 2017, we announced the first Fire TV Edition smart TV. Now, just three years later, Fire TV Edition has grown into a worldwide program which will include more than 150 Fire TV Edition models across more than ten countries by the end of the year,” said Marc Whitten, Vice President, Amazon Fire TV, in a statement. “The all-new Fire TV Edition provides companies with the services and tools they need to bring Fire TV to more categories and more screens,” he said.

CES 2020 coverage - TechCrunch

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The streaming wars to come

After years of speculation and hype, major players in Hollywood and Silicon Valley are getting ready to challenge Netflix .

It’s only been a few months since Apple launched TV+, followed quickly by Disney launching Disney+. And there’s more to come this year, with AT&T-owned WarnerMedia preparing to release HBO Max, while NBCUniversal does the same with Peacock.

Even before they’re available to subscribers, these new offerings are shaking up the status quo: As part of their preparation, Hollywood studios are consolidating, and they’re reclaiming key titles like “Friends” and “The Office” from rival platforms.

Netflix, in turn, has been preparing for a world where its old content partners are either unwilling to license key titles, or charging a much higher price when they do — hence the service’s seemingly endless flood of original content, and its exclusive contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with big-name creators.

Studios don’t have much of a choice here: with declining box office at U.S. movie theaters and declining ratings for traditional TV, audiences are shifting and Hollywood must move with it, or be left behind.

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Former HBO exec Richard Plepler signs exclusive production deal with Apple TV+

Nearly a year after stepping down as chief executive of HBO, Richard Plepler and his production company Eden Productions have signed a five-year deal with Apple TV+.

Plepler started at HBO back in 1993 and became CEO in 2013. During his time in that role, HBO had continued success with shows new (“True Detective” and “Big Little Lies”) and old (“Game of Thrones”). It also launched its direct-to-consumer subscription streaming service, HBO Now, which in some ways was the precursor to HBO Max — an upcoming service from AT&T and WarnerMedia that will incorporate HBO as part of a larger offering.

Plepler left HBO in the aftermath of AT&T’s acquisition of its corporate parent Time Warner. Reports suggested that AT&T executives wanted HBO to ramp up its content production in the hopes of growing the subscriber base and time spent watching the service.

According to The New York Times, Plepler’s deal will see Eden Productions creating TV shows, documentaries and feature films exclusively for Apple TV+.

In explaining his move, Plepler told The Times that he didn’t want to try to “duplicate” his time at HBO — instead, it made sense to “do my own thing.” He also said that his only serious talks were with Apple: “I thought that Apple was the right idea very quickly, just because it was embryonic enough that I thought maybe, you know, I could make a little contribution there.”

Apple TV+ now live, with one year free for new iOS, Apple TV and Mac purchases

 

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ByteDance & TikTok have secretly built a Deepfakes maker

TikTok parent company ByteDance has teamed up with one of the most controversial apps to let you insert your face into videos starring someone else. TechCrunch has learned that ByteDance has developed an unreleased feature using life-like Deepfakes technology that the app’s code refers to as Face Swap. Code in both TikTok and its Chinese sister app Douyin asks users to take a multi-angle biometric scan of their face, then choose from a selection of videos they want to add their face to and share.

Users scan themselves, pick a video, and have their face overlaid on the body of someone in the clip with ByteDance’s new Face Swap feature

The Face Swap option was built atop the API of Chinese Deepfakes app Zao, which uses artificial intelligence to blend one person’s face into another’s body as they move and synchronize their expressions. Zao went viral in September despite privacy and security concerns about how users’ facial scans might be abused.

The Deepfakes feature, if launched in Douyin and TikTok, could create a more controlled environment where face swapping technology plus a limited selection of source videos  can be used for fun instead of spreading misinformation. It might also raise awareness of the technology so more people are aware that they shouldn’t believe everything they see online. But it’s also likely to heighten fears about what Zao and ByteDance could do with such sensitive biometric data — similar to what’s used to set up FaceID on iPhones. Zao was previously blocked by China’s WeChat for presenting “security risks”.

Several other tech companies have recently tried to consumerize watered-down versions of Deepfakes. The app Morphin lets you overlay a computerized rendering of your face on actors in GIFs. Snapchat offered a FaceSwap option for years that would switch the visages of two people in frame, or replace one on camera with one from your camera roll, and there are standalone apps that do that too like Face Swap Live. Then last month, TechCrunch spotted Snapchat’s new Cameos for inserting a real selfie into video clips it provides, though the results aren’t meant to look confusingly realistic.

But ByteDance’s teamup with Zao could bring convincingly life-like Deepfakes to TikTok and Douyin, two of the world’s most popular apps with over 1.5 billion downloads.

Zao in the Chinese iOS App Store

Zao in the Chinese iOS App Store

Hidden Inside TikTok and Douyin

TechCrunch received a tip about the news from Israeli in-app market research startup Watchful.ai. The company had discovered code for the Deepfakes feature in the latest version of TikTok’s and Douyin’s Android apps. Watchful.ai was able to activate the code in Douyin to generate screenshots of the feature, though it’s not currently available to the public.

First, users scan their face into TikTok. This also serves as an identity check to make sure you’re only submitting your own face so you can’t make unconsented Deepfakes of anyone else using an existing photo or a single shot of their face. By asking you to blink, nod, and open and close your mouth while in focus and proper lighting, Douyin can ensure you’re a live human and create a manipulable scan of your face that it can stretch and move to express different emotions or fill different scenes.

You’ll then be able to pick from videos ByteDance claims to have the rights to use, and it will replace the face of whoever’s in the clip with your own. You can then share or download the Deepfake video, though it will include an overlayed watermark the company claims will help distinguish the content as not being real.

Code in th apps reveals that the Face Swap feature relies on the Zao API. There are many references to this API including strings like:

zaoFaceParams
/media/api/zao/video/create
enter_zaoface_preview_page
isZaoVideoType
zaoface_clip_edit_page

Watchful also discovered unpublished updates to TikTok and Douyin’s terms of service that cover privacy and usage of the Deepfakes feature. Inside the US version of TikTok’s Android app, English text in the code explains the feature and some of its terms of use:

“Your facial pattern will be used for this feature. Read the Drama Face Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for more details. Make sure you’ve read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before continuing. 1. To make this feature secure for everyone, real identity verification is required to make sure users themselves are using this feature with their own faces. For this reason, uploaded photos can’t be used; 2. Your facial pattern will only be used to generate face-change videos that are only visible to you before you post it. To better protect your personal information, identity verification is required if you use this feature later. 3. This feature complies with Internet Personal Information Protection Regulations for Minors. Underage users won’t be able to access this feature. 4. All video elements related to this feature provided by Douyin have acquired copyright authorization.”

ZHEJIANG, CHINA – OCTOBER 18 2019 Two us senators have sent a letter to the us national intelligence agency saying TikTok could pose a threat to us national security and should be investigated. Visitors visit the booth of douyin(Tiktok) at the 2019 smart expo in hangzhou, east China’s zhejiang province, Oct. 18, 2019.- PHOTOGRAPH BY Costfoto / Barcroft Media (Photo credit should read Costfoto / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

A longer terms of use and privacy policy was also found in Chinese within Douyin. Translated into English, some highlights from the text include:

  • “The ‘face-changing’ effect presented by this function is a fictional image generated by the superimposition of our photos based on your photos. In order to show that the original work has been modified and the video generated using this function is not a real video, we will mark the video generated using this function. Do not erase the mark in any way.”

  • “The information collected during the aforementioned detection process and using your photos to generate face-changing videos is only used for live detection and matching during face-changing. It will not be used for other purposes . . . And matches are deleted immediately and your facial features are not stored.”

  • “When you use this function, you can only use the materials provided by us, you cannot upload the materials yourself. The materials we provide have been authorized by the copyright owner”.

  • “According to the ‘Children’s Internet Personal Information Protection Regulations’ and the relevant provisions of laws and regulations, in order to protect the personal information of children / youths, this function restricts the use of minors”.

We reached out to TikTok and Douyin for comment regarding the Deepfakes feature, when it might launch, how the privacy of biometric scans are protected, the age limit, and the nature of its relationship with Zao. However, TikTok declined to answer those questions. Instead a spokesperson insisted that “after checking with the teams I can confirm this is definitely not a function in TikTok, nor do we have any intention of introducing it. I think what you may be looking at is something slated for Douyin – your email includes screenshots that would be from Douyin, and a privacy policy that mentions Douyin. That said, we don’t work on Douyin here at TikTok.” They later told TechCrunch that “The inactive code fragments are being removed to eliminate any confusion”, which implicitly confirms that Face Swap code was found in TikTok.

A Douyin spokesperson told TechCrunch that “Douyin has no cooperation with Zao” despite references to Zao in the code. They also denied that the Face Swap terms of service appear in TikTok despite TechCrunch reviewing code from the app showing those terms of service and the feature’s functionality.

This is suspicious, and doesn’t explain why code for the Deepfakes feature and special terms of service in English for the feature appear in TikTok, and not just Douyin where the app can already be activated and a longer terms of service was spotted. TikTok’s US entity has previously denied complying with censorship requests from the Chinese government in contradiction to sources who told the Washington Post and that TikTok did censor some political and sexual content at China’s behest.

It’s possible that the Deepfakes Face Swap feature never officially launches in China or the US. But it’s fully functional, even if unreleased, and demonstrates ByteDance’s willingness to embrace the controversial technology despite its reputation for misinformation and non-consensual pornography. At least it’s restricting the use of the feature by minors, only letting you face-swap yourself, and preventing users from uploading their own source videos. That avoid it being used to create dangerous misinformation Deepfakes like the one making House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem drunk.

“It’s very rare to see a major social networking app restrict a new, advanced feature to their users 18 and over only” Watchful.ai co-founder and CEO Itay Kahana tells TechCrunch. “These deepfake apps might seem like fun on the surface, but they should not be allowed to become trojan horses, compromising IP rights and personal data, especially personal data from minors who are overwhelmingly the heaviest users of TikTok to date.”

TikTok has already been banned by the US Navy and ByteDance’s acquisition and merger of Musically into TikTok is under investigation by the Comittee On Foreign Investment In The United States. Deepfake fears could further heighten scrutiny.

With the proper safeguards, though, face-changing technology could usher in a new era of user generated content where the creator is always at the center of the action. It’s all part of a new trend of personalized media that could be big in 2020. Social media has evolved from selfies to Bitmoji to Animoji to Cameos and now consumerized Deepfakes. When there are infinite apps and videos and notifications to distract us, making us the star could be the best way to hold our attention.