Responsible Use
Last updated
The short version. Use faces you have permission to use. Tell people when what they’re watching is altered. Never use this to make someone appear to say or do something they did not.
Face transformation is a genuinely fun technology and a genuinely dangerous one, and which of those it is depends entirely on the person operating it. These guidelines describe the difference. They form part of the Terms, so they are obligations rather than suggestions — but we would rather explain the reasoning than simply list prohibitions.
Consent is the whole thing
A face belongs to the person wearing it. Before you use someone’s likeness, get their permission — clearly, and for the specific thing you intend to do. Permission to appear in a friend’s comedy sketch is not permission to appear in an advertisement, and certainly not in anything sexual or political.
- Your own face is always fine.
- A friend's face, with their informed agreement, for the use you described to them.
- A licensed or synthetic face you hold the rights to.
- A public figure's face is not fair game — fame is not consent.
- Anyone who cannot meaningfully agree, including children, is never an acceptable subject.
If you find yourself hoping the person never finds out, you already know the answer.
Disclosure
People calibrate their trust in a video to whether they believe it is real. Removing that signal without telling them is the core harm this technology enables, and it is easy to avoid: say that the feed is transformed.
In casual contexts — a call with friends who can see the effect and are laughing at it — the disclosure is self-evident. In any context where someone might reasonably believe they are seeing an unaltered person, be explicit. That includes recorded content, anything published, and any conversation with a stranger.
A growing number of jurisdictions now legislate on synthetic media labelling, and many platforms require disclosure of altered content independently of the law. Both are your responsibility to follow.
Lines that should not be crossed
Some uses are not a grey area, and no creative framing makes them acceptable.
- Fraud and identity theft — defeating identity checks, impersonating someone in a financial or legal process, or passing an interview as another person.
- Non-consensual sexual content — of anyone, ever, and involving minors under no circumstances whatsoever.
- Harassment and abuse — using someone’s face to humiliate, threaten, stalk or torment them.
- Political deception — making a real person appear to endorse, confess or announce something they did not, particularly around elections.
- Fabricated evidence — producing footage intended to be taken as a genuine record of events.
Where this is clearly fine
It is worth being equally concrete about the ordinary case, because most use of SwapCam is entirely unremarkable:
- Entertainment and comedy where the audience knows it is an effect.
- Privacy — obscuring your own face in a call or a recording.
- Creative and artistic work that does not pass itself off as real.
- Experimenting with the technology on your own face.
- Character work for streaming, where the persona is the point.
Platform rules still apply
Video services set their own policies on altered camera feeds, and some prohibit them outright. SwapCam permitting something does not mean the service you are using does. Check their rules before you rely on it.
Reporting misuse
Because SwapCam runs entirely on the user’s own machine, we cannot see what anyone produces with it and cannot take it down — content lives wherever it was published, not with us. If you have been targeted, reporting to the platform hosting the content is usually the fastest route to removal, and in serious cases it is worth involving local law enforcement.
We still want to know. Write to support@swapcam.online. Patterns of abuse shape what we build, what we restrict, and who we withdraw the licence from.