Conscripting a face-swapping app for Ukraine’s war efforts.
The app uses machine learning to swap users’ faces into GIFs and videos of movies and memes — essentially producing domesticated deepfakes for entertainment on social media. And while that essential functionality still remains, the Reface team has since conscripted its app into Ukraine’s wider information war.
It’s impossible to know the impact of such work, but rallying resistance is certainly not a trivial matter. Analysts say Russia’s media blackout was a key part of: to strike fast and hold territory before domestic politics could disrupt an unpopular invasion or Western powers could stir themselves to help.
Shvets says that up until the moment that bombs started falling, he hadn’t ever thought his world would look like this. He says he only wanted to start Reface to make fun tools for creators. “Frankly speaking, I could never have imagined doing this with the app,” he says.