10 ms·

Artist uses a computer model of his face to get a French National ID

136 points by oska 9y ago

morganvachon 9y ago
This is a perfect example of the uncanny valley for anyone not familiar with the concept. It's just beyond the threshold enough to make the viewer feel as if something's off.
- Insanity 9y ago
  Yeah. I do think it looks really good though. Especially on the actual ID the difference is hard to tell. The hair is the thing that gives it away most to me. Do love the detail with the beard stubs!
- mtkd 9y ago
  > as if something's off I suspect 2018 is the year that stops being an thing
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I think it already has, if you're willing to put in the work and funding.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  I can't tell. And I used to be pretty good at spotting fake stills but this is beyond my ability to discern, what specifically makes you feel 'something's off'?
  - pikzen 9y ago
    Shadows near the neck area, very similar to what most ambient occlusion algorithms would give. Hair has a shine that would almost never happen unless you dumped an entire bottle of shampoo on your head for a week straight. It also just sinks right in, no pores, nothing. Texture quality is still a bit low,especially on the forehead. Normal maps are off (or not there at all), so there's no bumps and crevices there. Skin is blurred (but that may be a compression artifact) And of course, the blur feels extremely unnatural. Especially knowing the shitty photomatons 99% of people use to get their pictures taken for official purposes, they'll never have such a focus on the face and blur everything out.
  - morganvachon 9y ago
    The eyes look dead, the hair is obviously fake, and blur seems to be used to soften the wrong parts. It is very close though. I showed it to my wife with no context, and she immediately asked if it was a still from a new video game.
andybak 9y ago
Hmmmm. Without knowing the details of how the image was created it's hard to say whether this is especially interesting or not. For example - why would a 3D model based on high-quality photogrammetry be any less "real" than a digital photograph. It's just a few more stages in a processing pipeline that starts with his real face. If however - there was no photographic source material - either for geometry or textures - then it becomes much more interesting. I suspect it's actually somewhere between the two and therefore mildly interesting but not incredibly profound.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > For example - why would a 3D model based on high-quality photogrammetry be any less "real" than a digital photograph. Because it isn't. It shows that you can get a digital ID based on the photograph of an entity that technically never existed, it's a texture map around human shaped blank, not a photograph of a human. You can bet that to the authorities this is a real problem.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    It is not. Photo quality is low a anyway. What's important is a controlled process that attaches this photo to a hard-to-forge token, such as a passport or other identity document. It confirms that some designated clerk looked at the photo and at the person, and also at other documents confirming the identity of that person, and maybe asked questions to make sure the person is who (s)he alleges to be. That photo is for reference only, and is worth next to nothing without the identity verification process above.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      You're talking to the guy that pioneered digital photos used for identification purposes in 1985 (Goodsports, Alphabet BV, Amsterdam). I think I know a thing or two about the processes involved to get a pass on being allowed to use digital imagery as proof of identity, the one thing that everybody involved from the official side was quite clear on was that any kind of tampering with the image content was absolutely forbidden. So I would expect this piece of art to have some far reaching consequences.
ipsin 9y ago
Now we just need a scare story about how two similar-looking men could get a single passport using an "averaged digital composition". [To bypass a no-fly list, for example]
- josu 9y ago
  Use deep learning to train a bot to scan the Internet for lookalikes of oneself and assume their identity.
- nine_k 9y ago
  A friend of a friend told me about identical twins that sometimes swapped identities and documents, to circumvent some bureaucratic hurdles.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    I knew a guy who had a black-sheep-ish twin brother. He was starting to turn his life around, but then stole his brother's ID and did a bunch of shit. We were like, "wait why would he steal your ID--oh yea..duh...you're twins"
  - programLyrique 9y ago
    I actually know identical twins that do that... Seems quite common. One managed to board a plane with the ID card of the other one for instance.
  - joshvm 9y ago
    A friend of mine and his brothers once (allegedly) traveled around South America on a single driving license. They look sufficiently similar to the photo and I'm guessing they weren't checked often.
- wohlergehen 9y ago
  Of course this has already happened :) https://youtu.be/dhM_2ubR9Aw?t=213 https://youtu.be/dhM_2ubR9Aw?t=213
tyingq 9y ago
The US passport system has you bring in your own photos as well. I wonder if the various law enforcement facial recognition databases account for the potential of people altering photos...changing the distance between eyes, nose, etc. Of course, end users can't alter mug shots.
- cm2187 9y ago
  The problem is that if you do that, you won't be able to use the epassport gates. Not that they are very efficients, but perhaps one day they will be.
  - natdempk 9y ago
    Maybe this is a feature rather than a bug. Hypothetically you could create a representation of yourself that works for humans to recognize you, but not for facial recognition systems.
    - lucb1e 9y ago
      I tried that, to fool the bus' facial recognition system (they want to keep known assholes out, or at least that's currently the intended purpose (or at least that's what they say)), but you need to go really far before most algorithms don't recognize your face as a face anymore.
jacquesm 9y ago
Oh that's cool. Would be even cooler if he had embedded some obvious artificial artifact through steganography in the image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography I've been messing with the system here by sanding off my prints before applying for a passport: https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-belt-sander-and-the-battle-for-privacy-a-body-hack https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-belt-sander-and-the-battle-f... That was a fun exercise but this guy takes it to the next level.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  It would be quite difficult to find something that would both be invisible and survive the process of being printed out onto the card, especially as you'd only have one shot at getting it right!
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Some code in freckles or length of beard hairs or something like that should do the trick.
    - roywiggins 9y ago
      EURion freckles would be a good prank :)
      - jacquesm 9y ago
        That's brilliant. Bonus points if it causes the workflow on the other side to totally stall because the ID card printer refuses to print the image.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  I don't see an easy contact method on your website, so here goes. The 'old people' link is dead. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20110121171058/http://www.compassnewspaper.com/NG/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73449:inec-machine-rejects-obasanjos-fingerprint&catid=43:news&Itemid=799 https://web.archive.org/web/20110121171058/http://www.compas...
noonespecial 9y ago
To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. It was taken early in the morning with an ancient camera under fluorescent lights at a post office. I am tinted decidedly green and my eyes look half closed. I look more like an extra on The Walking Dead than an international traveler. He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. The photo's job is to say that "the person identified by this card looks like this" to an official looking at that card. If he modeled his head well and chose good render settings, it might be truer than a "real photo" in this regard.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. That's not true. Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs to avoid people playing games with the system (such as: replacing the eyes with the eyes of someone else or changing other details that might screw up the biometric passport requirements).
  - fmoralesc 9y ago
    In Chile, where I'm from, the institution in charge of identity cards and passports effectively does this, and as far as I'm aware, always has. It doesn't sound weird to me.
  - noonespecial 9y ago
    >Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. Then the photo the Post Office official took fails this test. My skin is not green and my hair is not black. They sure look that way in my passport photo. The likely effect is that my official "photo" will become an amalgamation of AI facial recognition scans at official checkpoints through time. Perhaps closer to this render than any single photo could be. That's the scary part. The machine will simply learn to recognize me on sight. The 4th Reich won't have to demand my papers, it will already know me by heart.
adrianmonk 9y ago
To me, this is really not that weird. Law enforcement can put up "wanted" posters based on an artist's sketch. So there is already a way that governments rely on a synthetic image for identification purposes. Of course that is only for preliminary identification, but then this is a more accurate representation than a sketch.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  A photorealistic color painting might be just as good for identification purposes as a photograph, though it might be easier to tell it was done by hand. As long as it looks "like you" (according to other fallible humans!) then it does its job.
rhblake 9y ago
In Sweden an artist painted a self-portrait, took a photo of it, and used that photo when renewing his driver's license. It was accepted. [0] The transport agency, when told about this afterwards, had no problem with it as it was -- in that small size anyway -- indistinguishable from a normal photo (but they discouraged others from trying the same). [1] [0] https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/konstnar-har-sjalvportratt-som-korkortsfoto/ https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/konstnar-har-sjalvp... [1] https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/transportstyrelsen-bilden-ser-ut-som-vilket-foto-som-helst/ https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/transportstyrelsen-...
evanb 9y ago
Is there no confirmation under penalty of perjury that the image provided was a photograph (and not just a likeness)? Or, is it as he claims, satisfactory according to the requisite standards? "Artist uses a blog post to provide evidence of government falsifying documents."
- djsumdog 9y ago
  Well he lists the French legal requirements on the post and he seems to match all the criteria.
  - throwaway_photo 9y ago
    The criteria (online at https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10619 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10619) talk explicitly about photos. They also say it has to be taken by a professional or in a photo booth certified by the government. IANAL, but I wouldn't build on that defense.
avenoir 9y ago
I think this is the first time when I almost thought that this is a photograph not 3D model. The facial features are almost life-like, but then you look up and look at the hair line and you realize what you're looking at. Still mind-blowing, at least to me, how close we are to modeling 3D models of humans indistinguishable from real-life.
mbrookes 9y ago
What people seem to be missing is that this is a photograph. It just happens to be wrapped on a 3D model.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Is it? I thought the newsworthiness was that he re-made it. Otherwise, indeed, it is(/would be) just a picture. Edit: this comment makes a pretty good point regarding that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14576962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14576962
  - mbrookes 9y ago
    > Is it? Yes - photos of the face will have been used as texture and bump maps.
extr 9y ago
As a complete aside, google translate is incredible. Until I started reading the same thing again, I didn't even realize the page was french. And even then, I thought the second section was the translation, not the first!
throwaway321373 9y ago
This is too boring. Out here in 'radical' India, we have Aadhar 'unique ID' (tm) for such diverse specimens as trees and cows (and fully equipped with biometrics like fingerprints and Iris). I wish this was a '/s' but really it's true!

136 points by oska 9y ago

This is a perfect example of the uncanny valley for anyone not familiar with the concept. It's just beyond the threshold enough to make the viewer feel as if something's off.

Insanity 9y ago
Yeah. I do think it looks really good though. Especially on the actual ID the difference is hard to tell. The hair is the thing that gives it away most to me. Do love the detail with the beard stubs!
mtkd 9y ago
> as if something's off I suspect 2018 is the year that stops being an thing
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I think it already has, if you're willing to put in the work and funding.
jacquesm 9y ago
I can't tell. And I used to be pretty good at spotting fake stills but this is beyond my ability to discern, what specifically makes you feel 'something's off'?
- pikzen 9y ago
  Shadows near the neck area, very similar to what most ambient occlusion algorithms would give. Hair has a shine that would almost never happen unless you dumped an entire bottle of shampoo on your head for a week straight. It also just sinks right in, no pores, nothing. Texture quality is still a bit low,especially on the forehead. Normal maps are off (or not there at all), so there's no bumps and crevices there. Skin is blurred (but that may be a compression artifact) And of course, the blur feels extremely unnatural. Especially knowing the shitty photomatons 99% of people use to get their pictures taken for official purposes, they'll never have such a focus on the face and blur everything out.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  The eyes look dead, the hair is obviously fake, and blur seems to be used to soften the wrong parts. It is very close though. I showed it to my wife with no context, and she immediately asked if it was a still from a new video game.

andybak 9y ago

Hmmmm. Without knowing the details of how the image was created it's hard to say whether this is especially interesting or not. For example - why would a 3D model based on high-quality photogrammetry be any less "real" than a digital photograph. It's just a few more stages in a processing pipeline that starts with his real face. If however - there was no photographic source material - either for geometry or textures - then it becomes much more interesting. I suspect it's actually somewhere between the two and therefore mildly interesting but not incredibly profound.

jacquesm 9y ago
> For example - why would a 3D model based on high-quality photogrammetry be any less "real" than a digital photograph. Because it isn't. It shows that you can get a digital ID based on the photograph of an entity that technically never existed, it's a texture map around human shaped blank, not a photograph of a human. You can bet that to the authorities this is a real problem.
- nine_k 9y ago
  It is not. Photo quality is low a anyway. What's important is a controlled process that attaches this photo to a hard-to-forge token, such as a passport or other identity document. It confirms that some designated clerk looked at the photo and at the person, and also at other documents confirming the identity of that person, and maybe asked questions to make sure the person is who (s)he alleges to be. That photo is for reference only, and is worth next to nothing without the identity verification process above.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    You're talking to the guy that pioneered digital photos used for identification purposes in 1985 (Goodsports, Alphabet BV, Amsterdam). I think I know a thing or two about the processes involved to get a pass on being allowed to use digital imagery as proof of identity, the one thing that everybody involved from the official side was quite clear on was that any kind of tampering with the image content was absolutely forbidden. So I would expect this piece of art to have some far reaching consequences.

ipsin 9y ago

Now we just need a scare story about how two similar-looking men could get a single passport using an "averaged digital composition". [To bypass a no-fly list, for example]

josu 9y ago
Use deep learning to train a bot to scan the Internet for lookalikes of oneself and assume their identity.
nine_k 9y ago
A friend of a friend told me about identical twins that sometimes swapped identities and documents, to circumvent some bureaucratic hurdles.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I knew a guy who had a black-sheep-ish twin brother. He was starting to turn his life around, but then stole his brother's ID and did a bunch of shit. We were like, "wait why would he steal your ID--oh yea..duh...you're twins"
- programLyrique 9y ago
  I actually know identical twins that do that... Seems quite common. One managed to board a plane with the ID card of the other one for instance.
- joshvm 9y ago
  A friend of mine and his brothers once (allegedly) traveled around South America on a single driving license. They look sufficiently similar to the photo and I'm guessing they weren't checked often.
wohlergehen 9y ago
Of course this has already happened :) https://youtu.be/dhM_2ubR9Aw?t=213 https://youtu.be/dhM_2ubR9Aw?t=213

tyingq 9y ago

The US passport system has you bring in your own photos as well. I wonder if the various law enforcement facial recognition databases account for the potential of people altering photos...changing the distance between eyes, nose, etc. Of course, end users can't alter mug shots.

cm2187 9y ago
The problem is that if you do that, you won't be able to use the epassport gates. Not that they are very efficients, but perhaps one day they will be.
- natdempk 9y ago
  Maybe this is a feature rather than a bug. Hypothetically you could create a representation of yourself that works for humans to recognize you, but not for facial recognition systems.
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    I tried that, to fool the bus' facial recognition system (they want to keep known assholes out, or at least that's currently the intended purpose (or at least that's what they say)), but you need to go really far before most algorithms don't recognize your face as a face anymore.

jacquesm 9y ago

Oh that's cool. Would be even cooler if he had embedded some obvious artificial artifact through steganography in the image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography I've been messing with the system here by sanding off my prints before applying for a passport: https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-belt-sander-and-the-battle-for-privacy-a-body-hack https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-belt-sander-and-the-battle-f... That was a fun exercise but this guy takes it to the next level.

roywiggins 9y ago
It would be quite difficult to find something that would both be invisible and survive the process of being printed out onto the card, especially as you'd only have one shot at getting it right!
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Some code in freckles or length of beard hairs or something like that should do the trick.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    EURion freckles would be a good prank :)
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      That's brilliant. Bonus points if it causes the workflow on the other side to totally stall because the ID card printer refuses to print the image.
lucb1e 9y ago
I don't see an easy contact method on your website, so here goes. The 'old people' link is dead. Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20110121171058/http://www.compassnewspaper.com/NG/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73449:inec-machine-rejects-obasanjos-fingerprint&catid=43:news&Itemid=799 https://web.archive.org/web/20110121171058/http://www.compas...

noonespecial 9y ago

To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. It was taken early in the morning with an ancient camera under fluorescent lights at a post office. I am tinted decidedly green and my eyes look half closed. I look more like an extra on The Walking Dead than an international traveler. He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. The photo's job is to say that "the person identified by this card looks like this" to an official looking at that card. If he modeled his head well and chose good render settings, it might be truer than a "real photo" in this regard.

jacquesm 9y ago
> He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. That's not true. Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs to avoid people playing games with the system (such as: replacing the eyes with the eyes of someone else or changing other details that might screw up the biometric passport requirements).
- fmoralesc 9y ago
  In Chile, where I'm from, the institution in charge of identity cards and passports effectively does this, and as far as I'm aware, always has. It doesn't sound weird to me.
- noonespecial 9y ago
  >Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. Then the photo the Post Office official took fails this test. My skin is not green and my hair is not black. They sure look that way in my passport photo. The likely effect is that my official "photo" will become an amalgamation of AI facial recognition scans at official checkpoints through time. Perhaps closer to this render than any single photo could be. That's the scary part. The machine will simply learn to recognize me on sight. The 4th Reich won't have to demand my papers, it will already know me by heart.

adrianmonk 9y ago

To me, this is really not that weird. Law enforcement can put up "wanted" posters based on an artist's sketch. So there is already a way that governments rely on a synthetic image for identification purposes. Of course that is only for preliminary identification, but then this is a more accurate representation than a sketch.

roywiggins 9y ago
A photorealistic color painting might be just as good for identification purposes as a photograph, though it might be easier to tell it was done by hand. As long as it looks "like you" (according to other fallible humans!) then it does its job.

rhblake 9y ago

In Sweden an artist painted a self-portrait, took a photo of it, and used that photo when renewing his driver's license. It was accepted. [0] The transport agency, when told about this afterwards, had no problem with it as it was -- in that small size anyway -- indistinguishable from a normal photo (but they discouraged others from trying the same). [1] [0] https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/konstnar-har-sjalvportratt-som-korkortsfoto/ https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/konstnar-har-sjalvp... [1] https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/transportstyrelsen-bilden-ser-ut-som-vilket-foto-som-helst/ https://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/konst-form/transportstyrelsen-...

evanb 9y ago

Is there no confirmation under penalty of perjury that the image provided was a photograph (and not just a likeness)? Or, is it as he claims, satisfactory according to the requisite standards? "Artist uses a blog post to provide evidence of government falsifying documents."

djsumdog 9y ago
Well he lists the French legal requirements on the post and he seems to match all the criteria.
- throwaway_photo 9y ago
  The criteria (online at https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10619 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F10619) talk explicitly about photos. They also say it has to be taken by a professional or in a photo booth certified by the government. IANAL, but I wouldn't build on that defense.

avenoir 9y ago

I think this is the first time when I almost thought that this is a photograph not 3D model. The facial features are almost life-like, but then you look up and look at the hair line and you realize what you're looking at. Still mind-blowing, at least to me, how close we are to modeling 3D models of humans indistinguishable from real-life.

mbrookes 9y ago

What people seem to be missing is that this is a photograph. It just happens to be wrapped on a 3D model.

lucb1e 9y ago
Is it? I thought the newsworthiness was that he re-made it. Otherwise, indeed, it is(/would be) just a picture. Edit: this comment makes a pretty good point regarding that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14576962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14576962
- mbrookes 9y ago
  > Is it? Yes - photos of the face will have been used as texture and bump maps.

extr 9y ago

As a complete aside, google translate is incredible. Until I started reading the same thing again, I didn't even realize the page was french. And even then, I thought the second section was the translation, not the first!

throwaway321373 9y ago

This is too boring. Out here in 'radical' India, we have Aadhar 'unique ID' (tm) for such diverse specimens as trees and cows (and fully equipped with biometrics like fingerprints and Iris). I wish this was a '/s' but really it's true!