Zao (service of substitution of persons in the movie)

2019: Release of the Zao application

At the beginning of September, 2019 it became known of a release of the Zao application which, using artificial intelligence, allows to insert the user's person into the stage from the movie.

After registration the user gets access to the directory of scenes from movies (among them — the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, Marilyn Monroe and Jim Parsons who he plays Sheldon Cooper in "Theories of a Big Bang"). The application processes everything approximately in 10 seconds and replaces persons of the main characters with video. For this purpose only one photo of the person is enough to load.

Substitution of the person of Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie "Titanic"

Before use of Zao it is necessary to accept application conditions, and, according to users, the points breaking their private life contain there. For example, the user agrees to transfer to the developer of the rights to all rollers created in the application even if on them his face.

It was specified in the early version of the user agreement that all rights to images belong to Momo developer. In several days of a condition updated, having specified that the application will not be used by mini-video and a selfie in other purposes, except improvement of functionality of the application.

The application heading the rating of the most popular free products in the Chinese App Store segment received the rating of 1.9 of 5 and more than 4 thousand negative reviews (by the beginning of September, 2019). Zao developers as a result answered criticism and stated that they listened to it and will make changes to privacy policy what they need a little time for.

China is also concerned that the Zao technology can be used for creation of fake videos — for example to manipulate people during the election campaign or with the purpose to slander someone, or even with the purpose to provoke mass riots, extending unreliable information in huge scales.^[1]

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