TED Radio Hour - Incognito

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Original broadcast date: August 26, 2022. Everything is not what it seems. We can easily disguise ourselves in both the digital and physical world. This hour, TED speakers explore the ways we go incognito... from espionage to virtual reality. Guests include former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez, artist Holly Herndon, anthropologist Mary L. Gray and digital fashion designer Gala Marija Vrbanic. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at: plus.npr.org/tedSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

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From Ted and NPR. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. And today on the show, nothing is as it seems. We called it hiding in plain sight. Being able to transform. I always found it to be a very powerful thing. The fact that you were there and nobody knows. knew it, but you.

This is John Amendez, the CIA's former chief of disguise. Her undercover career spanned 27 years from 1966 to 1993, taking her to some of the most difficult operating areas of the Cold War, from Moscow to Havana to Beijing. She is and was a true master of disguise. Oh, yeah. Everything we touched, we disguised. In 1987, Jonna was working as a disguise and photo operations officer, somewhere in Southern Asia. I have to be a little vague.

Because if you told me, you'd have to kill me? Well, the CIA would really get ticked off at me. Johnna was sent on what she thought was a routine field visit in a neighboring country when an urgent mission came up. She quickly needed to disguise several officers, but she hadn't brought her usual kit. So here I was in a foreign country. And I have nothing. I have no disguise materials, nothing. So she had to get creative. So went into the office. I asked all of the case officers to go to the wives,

and I wanted all of the makeup that all of the wives had. Everybody, send me your stuff. And they just jumped all over this. So I got like four or five bags of makeup. And someone sent in a can of Dr. Scholes footpowder. And I like that a lot. Johna needed to disguise a local agent as a guard. I've showed him the can of Dr. Shoals powder,

and I said, this is for your hair. You're going to love this. And I turned him into an old man. He had gray hair. The more Dr. Shoals I put on, the whiter it got. We used a little bit of aluminum foil to give him a silver tooth. It was just, you know, it was improvising. Disguised as an old man in a security guard uniform, this agent was going to help his colleagues sneak into the Soviet embassy to steal a piece of crucial communications equipment.

But first, he needed to get rid of the real security guard. The night of the operation, we went into this compound. Our local guy, the man I had disguised, went over and spoke to the gate guard, handed that man enough money for him to take his extended family and retire. in the mountains for the rest of his life, never to be seen again. And then our local guy became the guard that stood behind the gate. He opened the gates. We drove in. Three guys in the van. Me and the driver were all in disguise. We backed up to the main building. The three guys ran into the building. They had on special shoes that were quiet and soft and wouldn't leave footprints. And they went up two flights the stairs. And then here came that machine that we were stealing. They lowered it down on ropes.

They put it in the crate, sealed the crate, put the crate in the van, and we drove it out. This turned out to be one of the most amazing operations because that machine was such a critical piece of equipment. Oh, it's like so nerve-wracking and exciting. But you later learned that this operation was actually a cover for another mission? Yes, about a month later, I was in Washington at a conference and my boss came over and he said, let me tell you something about your operation. The reason you were stealing that machine is not the reason you thought you were stealing that machine. On the other side of the world, there is a Russian who works with that machine and he's an agent of the CIA. And it's getting a little dicey for him. People are starting to look at him like,

hmm. Oh, so there's a Russian double agent who the KGB is starting to suspect is working with the Americans. Yes. And so the CIA wanted that machine stolen just to make it look like we were interested in understanding it. It'll take all the heat off the guy on the other side of the world, giving us all the information. And that's what they call the wilderness of mirrors part of espionage. Spies live in a world of disguises, deception and lies, where nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. But these days, with technology, it's becoming easier for all of us to transform our identities, to choose how we want to present ourselves to the world, or to hide our true selves, maybe even become invisible.

Do we ever really know who we're dealing with? Well, today on the show, incognito. Ideas about the benefits, psychological impact, and ethics around posturing as someone you're not, from artificial intelligence to virtual reality. Listen carefully. Don't be fooled by what you hear. But before we explore the current state of disguise, Let's go back to the CIA's Jana Mendez. Jana knows better than anyone that even the people were closest to might be hiding something from us.

I met my first husband in Europe and dated him for a year and a half. And it wasn't until shortly before we got married, I mean days before we got married, that my first husband advised me that it was actually the CIA that he worked for. So I was not recruited into the CIA. I came in a side door. I was a wife. I ended up back in Washington, D.C., working for the director of our office. And I was bored. I told my boss that I thought I would leave and go find a real job. And my boss said, well, why don't you take some of our advanced photo courses? So I ended up back in Europe, a photo operations officer. Yeah, what is a photo operations officer? Because it's actually far more sexy than it sounds. That meant that I could leave the confines of our office, go out and meet with foreign agents, train them how to use some of our proprietary camera equipment, some of our unique films. I also taught them how to do things like microdots. I taught them how to retrieve them. Wait, what is a microdot?

The microdot was a photograph of an 8.5 by 11 piece of paper reduced 400 times. Whoa. So that it ends up a black speck. So we would send them, say, a copy of maybe time magazine. And they would know that on page 47 in the 11th paragraph, the third sentence, the period at the end of that sentence had a microdot. stuck on top of it. And the foreign agent we were sending the dot to would have a lens. And he knew that he could take like a piece of cardstock and he could just poke a hole in the cardstock.

And put his lens in that hole, pick up that dot, put it on a lens, hold the cardstock up to the sun. And he could read an eight and a half by 11 page text. It was a very cumbersome but very secure way to community. with an agent. And what would it say, like, meet me here at this time? It could say anything. It could say, here are the intelligence questions we are trying to answer. It was a one-way system.

It was from us to him, but there would be a way for him to respond to us, probably by doing a dead drop, by putting his information in some sort of fake rock or fake tree branch or fake anything. saying, we used fake dead rats. Oh, really? Well, they weren't fake. They were dead rats. But we had people that would clean them up and put Velcro in their tummies.

We could put a lot in a dead rat. And then we could leave it somewhere knowing that no one was going to pick up that rat except our person who was looking for it. Or maybe a dog or an oiled animals. So we dipped them into Basco. So if an animal picked it up, he would drop it. Oh, got it. And probably run off howling. So it wasn't just people you were disguising.

It was punctuation in articles. It was rats. But if you had to say, you know, the rules around disguise, what makes a disguise believable? What makes it blend in? And, I mean, go unnoticed because that's actually, you know, that's, you know, that's That's the goal, right? Well, there are many reasons to wear a disguise when you're working with terrorists or counter-narcotics,

counter-terrorism becomes body armor. It's deadly serious. Somebody might shoot you if they think that you're an American in a lot of scenarios. But backing off from that, it's not just the facial oval. Disguise is all of you. and we always said that we could take the most mundane small pieces of equipment and give them to you. And if you had the inner confidence to wear it, your confidence would carry the day. There's a certain acting skill that goes with it.

You need to become that character. You need to believe that you are another person. And then it works. Did you have like a favorite, I don't know, a trick or something? like how do these how do you make it so that makeup doesn't come off on a hand with someone else touched your face like how do you actually do all that you know you'd sit down with the officer and get very specific where are you going to use this how are you going to use this but as far as eating we'd make sure that that you know the adhesive was fabulous and we'd style it if you were

if you were going to be wearing it for a week and sometimes they were we'd make sure that it didn't really get in your way. We were always working on, you know, refining our products and making it all work better. And, you know, we're able now to talk about some of it because it's old. They don't send us notes saying, oh, now you can talk about this. But things like we had never talked about the use of masks before. That was off limits, always off limits. And then all of a sudden, it wasn't off limits anymore. When? When was that? It was about four years ago. Once they say, yeah, you can put that in a book, then we assume, okay, they're not using that anymore.

The philosophy at the CIA, as technology was moving forward, and we would look at the next great think and say, oh, my God, how will we deal with that? We would take something that looked to us like a threat and find out a way that we could use it ourselves. That's John A. Mendes, the CIA's former chief of disguise. You can see her full talk at TED.com. Today on the show, Incognito. I'm Manus Shomerode, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. Before we get back to the show, I just want to let you know that our next bonus episode for TED Radio Hour Plus listeners is coming out soon.

And it's two of our producers in a lovely conversation about. one of the TED talks that most stayed with them. It's about TED speaker Nora McInerney, and they are talking about grief and love, and it's really intimate and really special. It'll be out on Wednesday, and you can access these Plus episodes and all our shows, sponsor-free, by supporting us at plus.npr.org slash TED, or write in the Apple Podcasts app. And thanks. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Zomerode.

On the show today, Incognito. And what if we can disguise and manipulate our voices to do things that no human can do? Well, it gets really confusing. This is artist Holly Herndon on the TED stage, playing a recording of what sounds like her singing. But here's the thing.

So that was my voice, but that wasn't me singing. So who was it then? So that was actually a machine learning model trained on my voice that can read scores in Catalan. So I've been working with machine learning for years, and I've been attempting to create a kind of version, a machine learning model of my voice that could perform. beyond my own physical limitations. And so just recently, I've been able to achieve this, and not only can this version of myself sing in English, but also in multiple other languages.

Holly calls her software appropriately, Holly Plus. And yeah, Holly Plus can read notes on sheet music, and it can do this. Sing a German rendition of Mac the Ninth, or sing the classic Latin hit Bessame Mucho. But I just want to reiterate, Holly, the person, does not speak Spanish, and she has never sung these songs.

Holly Plus is singing these songs, and it can do it in any language and in any vocal range. I trained a machine learning model on hours of my natural singing voice. So this required that I sang the entirety of the range of full. phonemes in the English language. So what does that mean? That means all of the kind of sounds that I would potentially make in the English language. So what I would do is I would sing from a set of phrases that are specifically designed to cover all of the sounds that I could create in English. Phrases like what? Well, I don't have the script in front of me, but you can find them pretty

easily online. They're called timet scripts. And they're really kind of random phrases. I think one phrase that pops into mind is that quick beige fox jumps in the air. Surprise, he shouts. Just kind of random things like that. I love it. It's kind of nonsense. And so then that is mapped on to other languages and I can kind of create this multilingual voice that can sing, you know, beyond my own physical capability. From what I've read, it took you and your collaborators years to get Holly Plus working so that you can give it instructions, and it spits out a remarkably lifelike song. And that is what we have heard so far on the show. Yes.

But at the end of your TED Talk, you took Holly Plus to another level. So I invite you to consider, if given the opportunity, who would you like to perform through? and can you imagine someone else performing you? With that in mind, I'd like to invite the incredible musician Fur to the stage. You invited another singer on stage, a man named Fur. Fur sang into a mic that he was holding in his right hand. He has a beautiful voice. But then he sang into another microphone held in his other hand.

And we heard a live version of Holly Plus, which was a dad. adapting his voice into your voice in real time. When you come around, act in this way. And yes, the truth is, I show you every day. Because you love to stay. Holly, it was so weird to see a black man wearing glasses, someone who looks completely different than you, open his mouth, and have your voice come out of it, and have complete and total artistic control of your voice.

With you standing right next to him with your mouth shut. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it was surreal, but, you know, it was also kind of disturbing. How would you describe the audience's response? response. Well, you know, when you're standing on the stage, you just see the lights. You kind of can't really see so much. But I felt like at the end of the talk, you know, everyone one seemed really happy and we're kind of applauding and seemed kind of flabbergasted a little bit. But it was really interesting to also have some conversations after the performance with different people. And to hear different people's concerns, of course. And what were their concerns? Do you remember? Well, I mean, I think it's really like fully understandable that musicians, it's usually coming from musicians, vocalists themselves, who are then worried like, okay, what does this mean for the sovereignty of my voice? Like if anyone can just jump in my body and sing with my voice, what does that mean for me personally?

And that's a real concern and it's one that that needs to be taken very seriously. What do you tell them? How do you say like, well, you know what? We're going to figure that out? What do you say? Well, that is something I'm actually actively working on to figure out at the moment. My partner and I have started an organization called Spawning. And so we're trying to figure out this really thorny question of ownership and custody of one's own model. What kind of interactions we can build around that with fans that works for the artist. There's a very justified kind of weariness for new technology. So I think the only way to really deal with it is to kind of meet it head on because it's happening. It's coming.

My answer to that would be that everyone should have the ownership and the ability to custody their own model and to be able to decide whether or not they want to make that public or whether or not they want to keep that to themselves or whether or not they want to license that to people. I think that should be a personal choice. So I think there are going to be people listening who are really excited by this technology. But then there are going to be others who are like, why? Like, why? Cool party trick, but why? Well, why? I think that there's many kind of artistic reasons why someone might want to perform through someone else's vocal timbre.

For example, even just kind of the range. So if you have a baritone range and maybe you would like to know what it's like to sing as a soprano. You know, or it's your kind of change. your bodily resonance by being able to jump into someone else's vocal timbre. And I think, you know, with me it's maybe less exciting, but with someone like a Beyonce, maybe some, maybe her fans would love to make a kind of series of songs in homage to their, to their queen. And so I could see, I could see other voices being really revered by fans and creating a whole kind of ecosystem of fan-generated art and fan-generated music that could be actually really fun and interactive.

Okay, so I guess Beyonce, I mean, I don't claim to ever speak for Beyonce, but I guess she might say, well, that's not okay if you are writing your own music and using my voice and then selling it. She might very well say that, and I think that should be entirely up to her. I don't think that should be up to her record label or up to her publisher or up to anyone else but her. So we've mostly been talking in the musician or artistic way of using this software. But, you know, most of us have probably heard of this ability to transform a voice as like those fake videos of President Obama saying things that he has never said or other deep fake voices. that's what's going to come to mind for most people. Yeah, I mean, I think I try to avoid the deep fake phrase because I feel like it has such negative connotations around trickery and scamming people and whatnot.

I see this technology as a really interesting way for people to find new ways to perform. So there's kind of two sides to this coin. There's the dystopian side where we're using this technology to cheat people or fake people. And then the other side to that coin is to ask, okay, what if we could create digital versions of ourselves and allowed other people to perform through us and we could perform through other people with their permission? What might that unlock? What kind of weird new performance styles and genres could that create? What kind of new art forms would come out of that? So I'm trying to look at it from a more optimistic perspective, but I think that also requires

consent. Okay. So let's say everyone's in. There's consent. Let's go back to what you were saying about, you know, the average person or average baritone being able to sing a soprano. It's kind of the ultimate disguise in some ways. What does it feel like? Have you ever sung into a microphone and had your voice come out sounding like someone else? Or right now, is it just your voice that you're doing this with? Well, the only voice model I have is my own voice. so it's not really as spectacular when I do it. No. No, you're missing out, clearly.

I am. But I definitely have plans to expand the catalog of voices. But also, you know, my journey with machine learning and voice processing, you know, it didn't really just start five years ago. One of the reasons why I got into this topic in general is because I've been working with the digitally processed voice for over a decade now. And so I started doing that. back in the day when I was a computer musician and I was looking for a way to make my computer music performance more embodied. And so I started using my voice as a kind of data stream as a way to control different parameters in my computer. I never really thought of myself as a vocalist in that

way. So I very much relate to this idea of using computer processing to be able to create sound beyond the physical limitations of my voice. That's something I've been really about. obsessed with for a very long time now. And it's an incredibly beautiful feeling on stage when I can sing into a microphone and I can rumble an entire auditorium with a huge kind of like engulfing sub base that I've mapped to my voice. That's a really wonderful and beautiful, empowering feeling. So I think it can be really transformative in that way. That's artist Holly Herndon. If you want to hear what else Holly can do with her voice and computers, you can find find all her music online, like this track chorus from her album, Proto.

You can, of course, watch her full talk at ted.com. So you may not realize it, but there are companies that go incognito, so that they can smoothly and swiftly help you get through the day. So let's imagine you're running late to a meeting or trying to get home and, you know, too far to walk. Maybe you don't have public transit. This is anthropologist Mary Gray. And so you decide to order a lift or an Uber or some, even a taxi. And after a few seconds, your driver accepts your request for the ride.

Let's call him Sam. Unbeknownst to you, Sam shaved off his beard last night. And this only matters because for a company like Uber, for example, it has all of their drivers verify their IDs with pictures. So the picture verification that a driver like Sam might send in the morning may not match his photo ID that's on record. That's going to set off an automated alarm bill for Uber. Sam doesn't know it, but before he picks you up, halfway across the world, a woman named Aisha is quickly checking his ID. And in front of Aisha is going to pop up those two faces, a photo of Sam that's,

on record and the photo he just took where he doesn't have his beard anymore. And her job is within seconds, quite literally, as a timer is ticking down, to identify, is this the same person? She squints at her screen with just moments to decide, is the clean-shaven guy really your Uber driver? Aisha decides, yep, that's Sam. When she clicks yes, it's funneled into Sam's account. And he's none the wiser. He has no idea that his ride could have been rejected.

And then you're on your way to the meeting. Sam's behind the wheel. You're both completely unaware that Aisha has actually facilitated you being able to get back to the office or to get home in time for dinner. This work, this micro job that Ayesha did, is what Mary describes as ghost work. For the past decade, she's been researching how millions of people like Aisha make our interoperable.

make our interactions with companies like Uber, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft appear seamless. In many ways, it's the people behind the screen who are doing content moderation, data labeling, and a host of other activities that, for the most part, we have no idea are integral to making the Internet work. So me, in this scenario, I trust that the app is not going to send, you know, axe murder to come pick me up. Why? Why doesn't the app want us to know that there are these humans doing really important work to keep us safe? Why do they keep it under wraps? Well, the hard part is that in most cases, the assumption is as the consumer, you don't want to be bothered. But there isn't a

way to have this kind of what seems frictionless, smooth experience as a consumer without having also a process that verifies who's behind the wheel. There is no computational system that can identify a person with 100% accuracy every single time. And so Aisha becomes necessary just for a moment, but we're sold the magic that Aisha doesn't exist at all. That is just the algorithms doing the work. To be clear, it's not as though everything on these apps, like when you call a car or you get food delivered or whatever the case might be, it's not all invisible humans working behind the scenes. They, it's, it's a it's this crucial combination, right, of algorithms, artificial intelligence, and humans. Where does

the line get drawn? So the dirty little secret of the past 10, 15 years is that there is no way to automatically update information and verify its accuracy. So we've always had people involved in a moment of looking at information and saying, yes, that's the accurate spelling of a book. Yes, that is information that is still living on a website. It's not just a dead link. There's some of that work that can be automated, but there's quite a bit that cannot And so it's a moving target for computer science and engineering to figure out what can you automate.

I wonder, you know, it feels like smoke and mirrors a lot of the time. And I guess it feels like ghostwork and not telling us that there are humans doing a lot of the things that we take for granted as when we use our phone and computers. Like it feels like deception. Yeah. So I think tech companies are pretending to. be something they're not because they're kind of faking it until they make it. As long as it seems like we want things done for us through robots or through AI, they'll keep trying. So this is really important because we haven't had the general public aware enough that artificial intelligence

cannot solve all of the problems. But I think also we are just coming to grips, both the engineering parts of the house and society with, wow, this is this is intractably hard to fix. When we come back more with Mary Gray and about what it takes to be an on-demand online worker. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Minouche Zamoroti. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zomerode.

And on the show today, going incognito. And we were just talking to anthropologist Mary Gray about the mostly invisible workforce that keeps many of our apps and services running. It's the people behind the screen who are doing content moderation, data labeling, and a host of other activities that, for the most part, we have no idea are integral to making the Internet work. These companies hire people to do short, quick tasks, ghostwork. And this workforce, Mary says, is growing quickly. 2016, there was a research study that was done by McKinsey, and they estimated that in the U.S. and Europe alone. There are around 25 million people who have done some form of this on-demand gig work online.

At that rate of growth, if you combined the current trend in contract staffing, temp agency services, that's like 60% 60% of today's global employment could likely be converted into some form of this kind of on-demand gig work by 20505. Whoa, it's a lot of people. That's not that far out.

Yeah. And it's not like these are easy jobs. You have found that people are often paid cents per minute and they have to work incredibly fast, but also be extremely accurate. Yeah, the intense pressure in low pay is fairly common. And that's because this is, I would argue, today it's unregulated work. I mean, this is contract labor that is constantly changing. It's like a steady stream of what's next that you need to vet or classify or sort.

And at the same time, it's cognitively draining. I think the irony here, let's take the example of content moderators. When we started this work, I think most people imagined that that was work that would go away once we automated identifying content that should be removed. Right. I mean, that's what Mark Zuckerberg told us, right? I think that's what he believed. I mean, I think if you're a techno-optimist or someone who's just relentlessly committed to fixing something with technology, it's awfully hard to see problem. that are perhaps beyond the reach of technology. Okay, but we have to say there is a plus side to some of this work too, right? I mean, it fits in with people's lives.

In some cases, they may not be able to work at all if they don't take these tasks. Yeah, it's appealing, and I think it's important to see why is it appealing. It's a response to what's not working in employment today. We met people who were doing this work because they had no choice. There were no other good job options. They were trying to control their schedules that often had to do with family care. So for many people, it's about controlling their time. The other thing they're trying to control is what they work on.

They wanted to be able to pursue interests. So, for example, Natalie was someone we met African-American woman who was living with her parents in Queens. She was in her late 20s, early 30s. So for her, for Natalie, this was a chance to be able to do the work that could generate an income and also balance her interest in music and choreography. So she wanted to balance her what she was working on in a way that we give her room to do what she really wanted to do, which was her art. The theme of our show is incognito. And I was trying to think, I'm like, so who is, who is incognito?

Who is in disguise? Is it the ghost workers themselves, that they are disguised by the technology? Or is it the companies who are saying, here's where we are. We're amazing. Look at what we can do. And it's so fast and it barely costs you anything. Use Uber. It's only $5 for you to drive, you know,

all the way to Midtown, in my case. Who is doing the disguising? Who is incognito in your mind? This is where it is really important to say the workers are not incognito. Just because we can't see them doesn't mean they aren't carrying out really valuable work. And importantly, they see each other every day online. They connect with each other. I would say right now it's the tech companies that are incognito that have, whether

with intention or not put off recognizing, seeing the value of the people who are critical to their contributions, to their services to consumers. To a lesser extent, in some ways, consumers are just asleep at the wheel. And now that we are learning to pay attention to how many people have a role in us having an experience online or being able to have an app whisk us away or bring us food. Now that we know that involves even more people than we realized before, are we ready and willing to pay our fair share? So if you're saying that these jobs aren't going anywhere, that they're absolutely needed by these companies, why don't they build this workforce into something that is reliable and high quality? Well, I think we could.

Most of the labor laws that we reference as the things that create security, that create safety on the job, they come from the 1930s, literally. Like, we have no good laws in place that have recognized the current relationship we have to. technology and how it mediates all of our work lives. We haven't even begun to think about what that means globally and for a globally connected workforce that works around the clock through the internet. That was anthropologist Mary Gray, and she wrote her book, Ghostwork with computer scientist, Siddharj Tsori. You can see her full talk at TED.com. Today on the show, Incognito. So far this hour, we have mostly explored strange and unusual ways that people and companies disguise themselves.

But it's something we all do every single day when we get dressed. Why do we wear clothes? So first of all, you need clothes to protect yourself, obviously. But how you choose your clothes, how do they look? This is fashion. And this is part of your education. identity and this is how you want to be perceived. This is Croatian fashion designer Gala Maria Verbanich.

And a few years ago, she started a company called Tribute Brand. And she wanted to debut her work in a big way. Our first dress, it's like a huge dress, golden dress, with a bow and a corset. It's very simple, but it has a lot of volume. And when Gala says volume, she means volume. This dress looks like a huge balloon bent. into a dress. It's made of gold with a humongous bow. Massive. It's big. It couldn't fit your wardrobe or a room. It's very big. The other part is the material. So it has this very

metallic, wooden material added to it. And it's very shiny and smooth. So it could be only done, like, if you look at, like, Jeff Coon's sculptured or something like that. But it's a dress. And if you're thinking, who could possibly wear this dress? Well, that's a rather analog question. Because Gala is a digital fashion designer. And this golden balloon-like gown, it only exists online in the virtual world, meaning you can't wear it on your actual body, but you could put it on a photo of yourself on Instagram.

It looks real in a manner that it looks perfectly fitted. So it looks real and unreal at the same time because you see a digital garment. You see there's something different. You see that this is not possible, and then you see it fitted on you like it was there. Designing digital fashion has opened gala up to wild creative possibilities. Like pants made of fire, anyone? Now you have so many possibilities to create something totally crazy and never seen before. Other virtual outfits that she's made include a shirt made of butterflies, a dress that shoots lasers.

And people are spending millions. of real dollars shopping for virtual clothes online. Our community are people who actually follow trends, like to set trends, but they're at the same time tax-savvy. So they like to also experiment with the new technologies. And, you know, of course, it's younger people. We need fashion where we express ourselves, where we socialize. And this is currently happening,

and it will happen even more inside online spaces. So from what I understand, part of your inspiration for creating cyber fashion came from noticing that young people were buying and then immediately reselling expensive physical streetwear brands. So who was doing this and why were they doing it? So those are those kids that are buying streetwear like Supreme, Offbite and, you know, all of those brands that supply very limited amount of clothing. So what I realized, they were gathering in those Facebook groups and reselling the garments they've just bought, like two hours ago, they bought the garment and then they're reselling. They just took a photo of themselves wearing that garment, posted it on their Instagram, and then they didn't need it anymore because they've shown, I got the garment. And then they resell it because they wanted to buy something new. And I just realized they just need an image of a garment in a virtual space.

Okay, so you saw this Instagram fashion trend happening, but you. You had also experienced dressing up virtually yourself because you're into video games, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I was a fan of the game and I'm still, I'm GTA, Grand Theft Auto. Out of my car. Not my wheels, man. That's my wheels. I spent all of my childhood playing that game.

And this is actually what brought me to digital fashion because my background is in traditional fashion. And my mom is a fashion designer, so I was always surrounded by fashion. but I was spending my time since childhood in those virtual spaces playing games. And I realized, like, all of the time I was playing that game, I was just going to, like, shops and buying clothing for my avatar. And then I realized that I cared more, like, how I look in those games than how I looked in physical world. And then I also realized that I'm not probably the only one

because there was a reason there were so many stores in those games. I know that some people, like, if they are, playing video games, they will spend money to buy, you know, a special cake or a special sword. Is that considered digital fashion? It is. Everything you use to express your identity is fashion or digital fashion. And, you know, when we were young, what was very, you know, wrong, I think, with the

games back then, that all of the characters were male characters. And you couldn't, you know, choose. This is why I like the clothes, because this was how was I able to change my character and do whatever I want to do. I've heard that from a lot of gamers, especially people who, because of their gender identity or sexuality, that maybe they don't feel safe in the real world and that they really appreciate the freedom that virtual worlds can give them to be whomever they want. Yeah, it's easier. People feel more safe. and people feel more confident.

It might be also a reason that online they are creating that persona they want to be. They are not constrained by their own physical persona they can't move away from. And they're in the online spaces, they can be 100% what they want to be. So it's what we've been noticing, you know, it's very welcoming, it's very inclusive, and now they're, you know, totally free. Okay, so cyber fashion is happening. in gaming. It's happening on social media. But the place that I've been wondering about is augmented reality, like Google glasses or other wearable devices that are allegedly going to change the way

we see the world around us. I think AR glasses will bring us there very soon. Because right now, if you want to wear digital fashion in AR, you have to take your phone and you have to film it. So it's kind of, you know, it's not very convenient. With air glasses, you'll just put those glasses on yourself, and you look at it around you, and you'll see that added layer instantly, and you'll see everything through it. What is it going to be like? Are we going to have an entire digital wardrobe? What if I decide I don't want to be a human? What if I want to be a hawk? Like, what will be possible?

That's the most exciting thing to me, because there are, I think, many, many people who don't want to look like humans. Once people realize they can be whatever they want to be, they can be a box, they can be a bear, they can be themselves, they can have multiple different identities. This is where I think, you know, it's kind of this, I would say, mindset shift is needed for people to realize. And of course, the tech is also needed. So it will happen with time.

I think there are some people who might think that this is actually terrifying to them, that being a real person in the world who gets dressed every morning is hard enough as it is. The thought of having to do it for the virtual version of themselves seems exhausting and maybe a little scary. Of course. Of course. Yeah, I think like each time I'm speaking, you know, about fashion, I always say we are not doing anything new. We are just using a new medium, but basically the principles that work inside traditional or physical fashion, like the whole psychology. around the product and why would anyone buy it and why would anyone need it is the same in the digital space and i think human psychology will always stay the same just the medium where we are is different and regarding fashion and identity expression which is like i think the most beautiful

thing is you'll be able to choose to whom and how you want to present yourself so you'll be able to choose to wear multiple different outfits at the same time. Right. So let's say I'm walking down the street and I see my kids teacher. She might have chosen to look to me like she's wearing, you know, an old-fashioned beautiful outfit clothes, though. But if maybe she's made it possible that if she runs into her friends, she looks like a peacock, like an actual bird. That's right. Exactly. I mean, it's mind-boggling. And this is, you know, this is just the surface right now we've been speaking about. You know, it can go in many different directions.

I'm just scrolling through your Instagram, and there's a woman wearing a beautiful ball gown that looks as though it's electrified. There's another guy wearing what kind of looks like a superhero chest plate, but it's fitted to him kind of perfectly. there's another gown that's made out of sort of metallic, puffy material like those Jeff Coon's artworks. And her dog is wearing the same dress and also looks amazing. Yeah, you can be anything, you know. You can be anything. Yeah, and your dog too.

That was tribute brand founder and digital fashion designer Gala Maria Verbanich. You can watch her TED Talk at TED. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about being incognito. This episode was produced by Katie Montalione, James Delahousie, Fiona Giron, and Catherine Seifer. It was edited by Rachel Faulkner, James Delahousie, and Katie Simon. Our production staff at NPR also includes Sanaz Meshkampur and Matthew Cloutier. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelin, Michelle,

Quint, Sammy Case, and Daniela Beloresso. I'm Manus Zameroidi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.