A crucial thing will be to detect these videos as they appear just like it is possible to detect Photoshoped material
High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#42Deepfakes are surely no more a "problem" than photoshopped still images? Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't…
The volume alone might be a problem. It takes some Photoshop skills to pull off an acceptable fake. If there's a turnkey website that can spit them out en masse, that's something different than having to actually hire a human to do it by hand.
Previously it took at least one CGI artist to convincingly fake video, probably several. This inherently limits how much of a problem it can be, because it doesn't scale. AI scales.
I mean- either deep learning AI automation is going to be important and useful, or it isn't. If replacing all drivers with robots is important, then automated turnkey fakery has the potential for disrupting something, isn't it?
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#43Deepfakes are surely no more a "problem" than photoshopped still images? Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't…
This is a good point, I hadn't really thought about it but the credibility of photos has cratered in the past decade.
Deepfakes' destruction of the credibility of videos is still worse because it totally removes the ability of a random citizen witness to capture evidence. This has been useful in the past, e.g. for documenting police brutality or just-developing events like shootings.
In a way this is a very undemocratic development -- putting the power of deepfakes in the hands of ordinary people is going to make everybody a less credible witness, no?
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Being able to conjure up a confession for anything by anyone is extremely powerful Being able to dismiss credible video evidence as 'deepfake' is equally powerful. In any case, it would be extremely risky to hang a case on a single confession video that the accused claims is fake, given the current pattern of prosecution the DOJ would never bring that case; it would be embarrassing in the public eye and probably ove…
The bigger risk would be PR types where there is no court and prosecuted. For example, the Clippers were forcibly sold after the owner-Donald Sterling[0] was outed as a racist. A few fake videos like that would have high impact and wouldn’t need to go through court. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling
I agree, but would-be fakers should be deterred by the airtight defamation case that would cost them millions. That is, of course, if the plaintiffs can prove the video is in fact, fake.
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#45Deepfakes are surely no more a "problem" than photoshopped still images? Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't…
I'd have to agree. In fact, I'm actually glad to see some pushback against the seemingly indelible veracity of photographic imagery.
Photos, and by corollary video, haven't been incontrovertible for at least two decades, and Hollywood movies are a clear demonstration of that fact.
We won't really be able to rely on pictures as proof, at some point in the immediate future.
Unfortunately, in an ever-more terrifying far-flung future, where eye surgery becomes sufficiently advanced, we won't even be able to trust our eyes. After that, I think it's probably just game over.
I really just don't have a strategy to countermand that one.
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#46I have to agree that this will be inevitable. Fake videos _will_ be created to spread misinformation. I bring you no solutions. Our best programmatic tool for these kinds of video analysis is currently the exact same technology that enables it in the first place. Furthermore, any neural network that can detect fake videos will only be used adversarially to train a better deep fake creator! The only solution I see is…
The best solution (IMO of course) is to stop unquestionably believing anything you see, read, or hear. Why most people choose otherwise has saddened me since childhood.
The worst solution is to panic and attempt to ban technology like this insuring that only the bad actors will use it.
I want everyone down to kids to be able to make fake videos to their little heart's content so we can all internalize this inevitable Black Mirrorization of reality.
And your proposed solution is fantastic BTW. Unfortunately, there are more than enough bad actors among us to social engineer those signatures out of otherwise trustworthy agencies and a general lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of most people to even bother to check for such things. Imagine the day we have a video where HRC confesses to the pedophile colony on Mars and coming up next, Trump tells everyone where he buried the bodies, and if people look, there will be bodies there (never mind that they're stolen cadavers). How will people cope with a world like this?
It is almost like we need pop art and pop culture to drive this point home before political mass media does it in the worst possible way.
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#47Deepfakes are surely no more a "problem" than photoshopped still images? Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't…
This is a good point, I hadn't really thought about it but the credibility of photos has cratered in the past decade. Deepfakes' destruction of the credibility of videos is still worse because it totally removes the ability of a random citizen witness to capture evidence. This has been useful in the past, e.g. for documenting police brutality or just-developing events like shootings. In a way this is a very undemocra…
This aspect is what scares me the most. Nowadays evidence can be easily fabricated and everybody has reason to be a skeptic.
The whole Cambridge Analytica debacle started blowing up after deepfakes gained notoriety and started getting banned on most sites. The whole time I was watching the undercover documentary Channel 4 released I kept thinking, "this 'found footage' could easily be a hoax"
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#48It's not a totally lost cause — I wrote a piece on what we can do about this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/... It's a first step, and my thinking has also evolved since—expect more updates in this space soon.
From this article: > AI researchers and platform technologists need similar in-house or third-party societal impact review boards to help them evaluate the potential unintended consequences of their work. As a machine learning researcher myself (albeit one who is probably unlikely to run afoul of one of these boards), this suggestion for research gives me pause. In the context of deepfakes, are you suggesting that it…
Lots of details to be worked out, but yes there are models in other fields. You bring up a real concern and there are ways to address it.
I'm not suggesting stopping research on this. But the way in which that research is communicated, what the focus is, and the way which particular sorts of replication is enabled or discouraged has an impact.
An example that the HN crowd likely knows better is vulnerability/exploit disclosure. There are good ways to do it and harmful ways to do it.
You can perhaps think about deepfakes as an exploit for the human sensors/cognition that handle authentication.
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Being able to conjure up a confession for anything by anyone is extremely powerful Being able to dismiss credible video evidence as 'deepfake' is equally powerful. In any case, it would be extremely risky to hang a case on a single confession video that the accused claims is fake, given the current pattern of prosecution the DOJ would never bring that case; it would be embarrassing in the public eye and probably ove…
Garry Kasparov has often accused V. Putin of maintaining his public influence by successfully attacking the idea that a verifiable truth can be established about his/oligarchical misdeeds. Surely, there are techniques to make educated assessments about the probability that [this] happened rather than [that] - but the public at large is neither literate in statistics nor receptive to uncertainty.
That's my view as well. In a time of information overload especially, people seem to be far more concerned in simply ending uncertainty, than validating the answer that precipitates that certainty. I believe this is referred to as the firehose model of propoganda. It effectively normalizes tu quoque fallacies, as the people whole have taken on a new set of facts are completely unprepared to debate the merits of those facts, and instead fallback to defending their newfound certainty.
Re: High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
#50Any "solution" to this that relies on crypto/signing will fail. Propagandists will just make their fake videos and then record them off of a computer monitor and claim that they're a whistleblower "leaking" the video from an internal system they can't otherwise access.
I don't really think reputation has a better chance of solving this either, people are all-too-happy to believe anything that confirms their personal beliefs and ignore whatever contradicts them regardless of source.
It's interesting that a lot of the comments here look at how to prove a certain video is real (and assume that people will accept that any video without a certain trait is fake) rather than proving directly that a certain video is fake.