Meta's Creepy Skin Deep "Security" Idea

While authentic videos coming out during this US campaign season show some of the leading actors proving with their behavior that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction (in this case, than any deepfake) – Big Tech continues with its obsession with deepfake technology as a serious threat.

A threat of such proportions, as far as the likes of Meta are concerned – or are pressured to be concerned – that it calls for some fairly drastic measures.

Take, for example, a new patent application filed by the giant, detailing a method of authenticating users by combining vocalization – “and skin vibration.”

… and what? The filing reveals that this is the kind of biometric data which uses not only a person’s voice but also how speaking causes that person’s skin tissue to vibrate.

This level of “creepiness” in biometric information collection and use is explained as a need to solve security problems that come with activating systems only with one’s voice. That’s because, Meta says, voice can be “generated or impersonated.”

But, say some experts, if skin vibration is “a second factor” – then that protects from deepfakes.

Meta doesn’t state if it thinks that what’s true of voice also applies to fingerprints – but the “skin vibration authentication” is supposed to replace both fingerprints and passwords in device activation. Needless to say, Meta insists that “user experience” is improved by all this.

Meta talks about things like smart glasses and mixed reality headsets as use cases where the technology from this new patent can be applied – yet that’s a whole lot of very invasive biometrics-based authentication for a very small market.

For now, those are some of the examples, with built-in “vibration measurement assembly” that makes this method possible, but once there, the tech could be used in almost any type of device – and for different purposes.