Free app lets you create a singing deepfake of anyone you know
If you ever wanted to see Mona Lisa sing “I Will Survive,” you’re in luck. Thanks to the magic of artificial intelligence, you can now turn any photo into a singing music video. A new deepfake app can make pop idols out of Kim Jong-un, Abraham Lincoln or even your best friends.
That’s right: Watch out, Deep Nostalgia — a new AI tool is taking social media by storm. Earlier this month, we told you all about a service that turns old photos into moving videos. Now, you’ve got to check out the amazing app that turns a portrait into music videos.
This fun tool lets you create digital videos of anyone you like lip-syncing to famous songs. Over the past two weeks, it exploded in popularity with over 2.2 million downloads and 15 million singing deepfakes created. Here’s everything you need to know about the fun new app.
Sing with the stars through Wombo.ai
Wombo.ai CEO Ben-Zion Benkhin works quickly. According to Insider, he got the idea in August of 2020, hiring seven people to create a beta app. Just a few months later, it’s skyrocketed to stardom. Most likely because of how easy it is to use.
The tech behind the app is super effective, too. When you choose a song from Wombo.ai’s library, you’re also choosing a pre-recorded set of motions. Behind the scenes, the studio hired performers to sing each song, and technicians recorded the facial, eye and lip movements.
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The app then applies these motions to whatever model the user picks. For example, if you want Danny Devito to sing “Don’t Cha” by The Pussycat Dolls, the app maps his face and matches it with the prerecorded performer’s movements. Cool, huh?
So far, you can only make videos with 15 famous meme songs, including Rick Astley’s classic, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Of course, if you’re not a good singer yourself, you can also upload a selfie so you can share yourself singing one of these tunes.
This reflects a growing trend of using deepfake technology for funny purposes. However, this tech also poses a huge safety risk. Research shows cybercriminals have even more access to dangerous deepfake technology, which has gotten so advanced that it’s nearly impossible to spot.
Even worse, you won’t believe how cheap it is for criminals to buy these services or the tech behind them. Tap or click to find out how to protect yourself from these convincing attacks. Now, let’s take a look at Wombo.ai specifically.
Is it safe, though?
As always, you should be careful when uploading private photos to public platforms. After all, you never know where they’ll end up. For example, if you’ve uploaded any photos to the web over the years, chances are good they’ve been thrown into the FBI’s facial recognition systems.
It’s not uncommon for developers to train facial recognition algorithms with images from different websites — without warning the photos’ owners, unfortunately. Tap or click to see if your photos have been used to train facial recognition systems.
Luckily, Wombo.ai doesn’t seem to keep the photos you upload. When you upload a selfie, the facial data is sent to Amazon Web Services for the animation. Amplitude, an analytics platform, studies how users like you use the app. The privacy policy says Wombo.ai will delete “facial feature data” — although it doesn’t specify what that means exactly.
Overall, it looks like this is a safe app, but remember to be careful when uploading photos to third-party apps. Tap or click here for Cybersecurity 101, a guide to staying safe online.
Free app lets you create a singing deepfake of anyone you know
