The term digiclone most often refers to appearance clones (around since early 2000s) as voice clones do not exist yet (or their existence is yet not known of). (an expert estimate puts their arrival time at ten to fifteen years from now). If it (a computer generated synthesis, the fabrication) is able to convince somebody that it is human then it is a digiclone. This implies that photorealism is not required in many cases of digicloning if the resulting manufacturation is distributed in low definition media, such as most of video content from the Internet. In the movie industry digiclones are often referred to as digital stuntpeople or synth doubles.
Digicloning technique summary The technique for making digiclones consist of roughly four steps: # into a computer model using either #* a 3D-scanning device such as Arius3d or Cyberware scanner, #* stereo camera (or multi camera) setup or #* sculpting from ordinary photograph(s) # from an actor utilizing stereo (or higher dimension) computer vision to achieve dense motion capture. # by cross-mapping the captured action onto the model. # .
The last two steps are very difficult due to various reasons such as translucency of human skin i.e. there is light coming out from inside of the skin and the complexity of walking motion.
Digiclones on public display Digiclones of Keanu Reeves, Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne were made by ESC Entertainment for the motion pictures Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. Digiclone of Tobey Maguire was made for movies Spider-man 2 and Spider-man 3.
Proper grammatical usage of the term If somebody's been digicloned (especially without their concent) it is proper to refer to the digiclone as "digiclone of somebody". Saying "Somebody's digiclone" is not correct and is considered extremely inapropriate and insultative in many civilized cultures.
Main applications * More impressive super heroes/villains for movies * Aqcuisition of porn actors/actresses that require no pay, work tirelesly around the clock and have highly adjustable appearance and abilities * Destroying people who are a hinderance to your interests
Countermeasures The most obvious countermeasures are: * Avoid 3D scanners * Avoid getting photographed or videotaped * Wear protective clothing i.e. loose clothing, niqb (veil) or burqa
Voice clones Voice cloning has not yet been demonstrated, but with the advent of articulatory modeling (where the vocal tract of someone is imaged using MRI and/or CT scans) and synthesis is done by using the physical attributes of the vocal tract, not samples of someone's voice has lead to rapid development of voices that aren't immediatelly distinguishable to be a computer and have a sound described as organic has caused experts in the area to alert us to that voice cloning may be upon us in 10-15 years.
Implications As of 2007 no judicial system takes digiclones and their potential applications in manufacturing frameups and alibis into account. Also the rapid destruction of privacy and gross inequality where people and organisations with the ability to digiclone people are in the position to inflict horrible damage on other people, it's effects on the social fabric of human society, relationships and how we view and relate to other humans, ourselves and humankind in general are ongoing mostly unadressed.
Trivia * Human appearance was captured to a computer model for the first time in 1971 by Henri Gouraud who is most famous for developing the Gouraud shading, an computationally inexpensive way of estimating how much light a polygonal surface reflects. The capture set-up and result are viewable . *The first computer animation of human appearance in 1972 by Frederik I. Parke relied heavily on Gourauds work. The capture method used was the same as Gouraud's, a vector mesh drawn on the human model's face photographed from the front and the side.