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Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

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Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#41
post #12

Definitely some interesting applications. Sort of orthogonal but is there a similar way to get sound from seeing someone's lip's move in a video -- would it then be possible to recover audio/conversations from old video only files? Edit: Guess they can read lips via AI https://www.techemergence.com/machine-learning-that-learns-m... Now getting the high quality sound from just video would be amazing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17681442

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#42
post #12

Definitely some interesting applications. Sort of orthogonal but is there a similar way to get sound from seeing someone's lip's move in a video -- would it then be possible to recover audio/conversations from old video only files? Edit: Guess they can read lips via AI https://www.techemergence.com/machine-learning-that-learns-m... Now getting the high quality sound from just video would be amazing.

> Definitely some interesting applications.

Eavesdropping is the obvious one. What others do you have in mind?

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#43

Forgive me, as someone with zero actual knowledge in this field. This may be a naive question, but wouldn't this be fairly easily defeated by playing songs in the background?

you can separate the music from the other sounds.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#44
post #15

At some point it is (controversially) hypothesized that we may be able to pull imprinted recordings off of ancient artifacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics#Past_interpre...

I also once thought of that, but maybe there are other ways in which large vibrations have left fingerprints on materials. I don't mean gravitational waves, but really acoustic phenomena. Like a comet impact or a vulcano outburst. What's a delicate material which would be able to record sound but that doesn't get destroyed by time? Clay that dries up is a logical one.

Old glass or porcelain might be the most viable candidates for a first look as they would be cooling off from a heated, more malleable state, potentially capturing sound from the immediate vicinity as they cooled off.

I have no science to back this up. It's just a hunch.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#45
post #15

At some point it is (controversially) hypothesized that we may be able to pull imprinted recordings off of ancient artifacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics#Past_interpre...

> [Jones] claimed to have extracted the hum of the potter's wheel from the grooves of a pot,

So far so good...

> and the word "blue" from an analysis of patch of blue color in a painting.

What the hell?

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With enough processing power, you can listen to anyone as long as you can get an object in frame that’s vibrating with speech (the UK and Chinese CCTV networks comes to mind). Depending on resolution, I’d expect this to be the case for any footage already stored. It’s just a matter of having a distributed computing job kicked off to comb through video data and add the additional audio metadata. Will you only speak of…

> Will you only speak of sensitive subjects in rooms with no windows? That is exactly why almost all DOD secure areas are windowless.

> That is exactly why almost all DOD secure areas are windowless.

I'm pretty sure that a bigger factor in why secure facilities have limitations on windows (and especially on ground floor windows) is physical security.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#47
post #37
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only be useful if everyone were outside, and you wanted a split second of many different people's conversations. Satellites move rather quickly relative to the Earth's surface.

Some of them do, there are geosynchronous spy satellites. https://www.popsci.com/gaofen-4-worlds-most-powerful-geo-spy... "It may also have a lower resolution video streaming capacity."

Ok I was coming to say "spy satellites at 40,000 km up - I doubt they can see anything. And if the linked article is correct the Chinese satellites up there have a resolution of 50m - good luck finding a crisp packet.

But the new generation "might" have a resolution of 1m. which is insane.

Then again, good luck knowing which square meter of the 1/3 of the earths surface you can see, has the crisp packet in.

I still think there will be a place for good old bribery corruption and sex spy techniques for a while yet.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#48
post #25

Forgive me, as someone with zero actual knowledge in this field. This may be a naive question, but wouldn't this be fairly easily defeated by playing songs in the background?

It might be possible to cancel that noise out. But something like a pink noise generator or an office grey noise generator would probably fool it, the same way it would fool a microphone at distance

This doesn’t work anymore, if it ever did. There is free software capable of isolating audio like a single voice from background noise.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#50
pushing the argument to its limit : what happens if we can recover any speech from this or that material (moving leaves, bags, lips movements (AI would be good at that), changes in magnetic fields whatever). should we assume that there is no such thing as a "safe place" anymore ? One could argue there never was (because, for example, police can eavesdrop) but, this article implies it can reach a whole new level... How is that kind of technology controlled by those in powers ? Considering Apple is valued at gazillions of dollars, I guess those technologies will be worth a lot and be available to some others very powerful people... James Bond looks quite outdated to me now :-/
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