Google banks AI systems used to generate deepfakes on Colab

The updated terms of use include deep fakes-related work in the list of disallowed projects.

Colaboratory (Colab) spun out from an internal Google Research project in late 2017. It’s designed to allow anyone to write and execute arbitrary Python code through a web browser, particularly code for machine learning, education, and data analysis. For the purpose, Google provides both free and paying Colab users access to hardware including GPUs and Google’s custom-designed, AI-accelerating tensor processing units (TPUs).

Colab has become the de facto platform for demos within the AI research community. Google hasn’t historically been very restrictive when it comes to Colab content, potentially opening the door for actors who wish to use the service for less scrupulous purposes.

Users of the open source deepfake generator DeepFaceLab became aware of the terms of use change, when several received an error message after attempting to run DeepFaceLab in Colab. The warning read: ‘You may be executing code that is disallowed, and this may restrict your ability to use Colab in the future. Please note the prohibited actions specified in our FAQ.’

Not all code triggers the warning, suggesting that enforcement is blacklist based, and that the onus will be on the Colab community to report code that runs afoul of the new rule.

Deep fakes come in many forms, but one of the most common are videos where a person’s face has been convincingly pasted on top of another face. AI-generated deepfakes can match a person’s body movements, micro expressions, and skin tones.