Zao has sparked privacy fears and suggestions it could be used to defeat systems using facial recognition.It appeared in China on 29 August and
has proven wildly popular.To get more
china news, you can visit shine news official website.
But it has led to developers Momo apologising for its end-user agreement, which stripped users of the rights to their images.
And as the app went viral, Zao's owners aired fears users were devouring its expensively purchased server capacity.
Its popularity has also lead to assurances from Alipay, part of the Chinese
web giant Alibaba, saying that it's impossible for so-called deepfake
videos created by the app to be used to cheat its Smile to Pay
facial-recognition system.Zao is a face-swapping app that uses clips
from films and TV shows, convincingly changing a character's face by
using selfies from the user's phone.
But some users had noted the app's terms and conditions "gave the developers the global right to
permanently use any image created on the app for free", Hong Kong's
South China Morning Post reported.
"Moreover, the developers had the right to transfer this authorisation to any third party without further
permission from the user," the paper said, adding experts believed this
broke Chinese law.
Momo had subsequently deleted the controversial clause and issued an apology, saying its app would not store users'
biometric information nor "excessively collect user information",
Shanghai-based The Paper said.
But popular social media platform WeChat quickly banned users from uploading Zao videos via its platform,
citing "security risks".The app may also be a victim of its own success,
with Zao saying, on its Sina Weibo social media account, it had used up
a third of its monthly server capacity, budgeted at 7m yuan (£805,000),
on its first night.
And the following day, as users complained of a slow service, it said, "with a heavy heart", servers were at fully
capacity.Alipay, the world's largest mobile payment platform, with over
870 million users, has assured its users videos created in Zao cannot be
used to defraud its systems.
Many Alipay users take advantage of its Smile to Pay system, which allows payment verification by the user
looking into a camera at a shop or restaurant's point-of-sale.
Alibaba, which owns Alipay, says it uses sophisticated anti-spoofing algorithms
to make sure it isn't fooled by still photographs or deepfake videos.
"There is a lot of online face-changing software - but no matter how
realistic, it is impossible to break through the facial payment system",
the company said on its Weibo account.
Even before the system attempts to match the face, it detects whether the presented image is a
still, video or software simulation.Momo also moved to calm fears Zao
could be used for fraud, clarifying Alipay's point it only used and
adapted still photographs for its deepfake videos.
"The facial payment security threshold is extremely high, and 'face-changing'
technology realised by only one photo can't break through the security
system," the developers said.
It was "completely impossible" for deepfakes of this kind to threaten payment security, Momo told The Paper.
And last year, academic Pan Helin told China Daily Alipay's facial
recognition was "theoretically a more secure and convenient method than
the conventional use of passwords".
