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Back in '02-'04 I was a former games/graphics programmer working as a digital artist in feature film VFX. One area I specialized in was stunt double actor repla

Back in '02-'04 I was a former games/graphics programmer working as a digital artist in feature film VFX. One area I specialized in was stunt double actor replacements. Working on Disney's "Ice Princess" I fixed a stunt double replacement shot and realized a method of making the entire process generic, at feature film quality. By '06 I had an MBA with a Masters Thesis on the creation of a new Advertising format where the viewer, their family and friends are inserted into brand advertising for online advertising. By '08 I had global patents and an operating demonstration VFX pipeline specific for actor replacements at scale. However, it was the financial crisis of '08 and nobody in the general public had ever conceived of automated actor replacements. This was 5-7 years before the term deep fake became known. VCs simply disbelieved the technology was possible, even when demonstrated before their eyes. Going the angel investor route, 3 different times I formed an investor pool only to have at some point them realize what the technology could do with pornography, and then the investors insist the company pursue porn. However, we had Academy Award winning people in the company, why would they do porn? We refused and that was the end of those investors. With an agency for full motion video actor replacement advertising not getting financing, the award winning VFX people left and the company pivoted to the games industry - making realistic 3D avatars of game players. That effort was fully built out by '10, but the global patents were expensive to maintain and the games industry producers and studios I met simply wanted the service for free. Struggled for a few years. We closed, sold the patents, and I went into facial recognition. https://patents.justia.com/inventor/blake-senftner https://patents.justia.com/inventor/blake-senftner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lELORWgaudU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lELORWgaudU I was bitter about this all for a long time.

autoexec 4y ago
> Going the angel investor route, 3 different times I formed an investor pool only to have at some point them realize what the technology could do with pornography, and then the investors insist the company pursue porn. I'm not sure there's a huge market for people wanting to insert their friends and family into porn, but if there was why not just try it? Seems like it'd have demonstrated the tech worked commercially which could have attracted investment in non-pron uses and it could have ended up just one more technology in a long list of tech made successful as a result of porn.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  Such a service would be a lawsuit engine, the social pushback from the female population towards the creators of such a service would significant, and then the public impression of the technology would be "tainted with porn" if ever attempted with brand advertising. Meanwhile, simply the process of inserting consumers in the trailer of any Marvel superhero film and charging $1 for you own copy would make tens of millions. Repeat with any highly desirable fantasy franchise. That is the most obvious application. Actor replacement with ordinary people has a huge number of positive to society applications. Porn is not one of them.

autoexec 4y ago

> Going the angel investor route, 3 different times I formed an investor pool only to have at some point them realize what the technology could do with pornography, and then the investors insist the company pursue porn. I'm not sure there's a huge market for people wanting to insert their friends and family into porn, but if there was why not just try it? Seems like it'd have demonstrated the tech worked commercially which could have attracted investment in non-pron uses and it could have ended up just one more technology in a long list of tech made successful as a result of porn.

bsenftner 4y ago
Such a service would be a lawsuit engine, the social pushback from the female population towards the creators of such a service would significant, and then the public impression of the technology would be "tainted with porn" if ever attempted with brand advertising. Meanwhile, simply the process of inserting consumers in the trailer of any Marvel superhero film and charging $1 for you own copy would make tens of millions. Repeat with any highly desirable fantasy franchise. That is the most obvious application. Actor replacement with ordinary people has a huge number of positive to society applications. Porn is not one of them.