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Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be able to prove the video is raw footage, you just need to be able to verify that a publisher you trust says they recorded it. An HMAC allows you to verify that a message (like a video file) was not modified after the author signed it.

Hypothetical: An anonymous source releases CCTV footage that appears to show a public figure urinating on a homeless person. Do you really believe that we'll all ignore that footage because the signature doesn't belong to a major news organisation?

Yes. We will.

Because the future us will be conditioned to do so by our cryptographically integrated devices. There'll be so much fake video out there that we'll get accustomed to seeing it on our devices with the big huge "fake" sign flashing on it.

(Or, again, even worse, it will not have the "real" sign flashing on it that the video from validated publishers and cameras will have.)

We can be conditioned to do this extremely quickly. Again, ActiveX is what made all the plugin security warnings start popping up everywhere. But after a while, plugins like flash and unity even fell to the reality of us having been conditioned to click "Do Not Run Plugin" whenever we saw that warning. Are we better off without flash and unity? Probably, but that's beside the point. The point is that masses can be conditioned to implement their own control when you set up a system where only data meeting a certain standard is accepted. And it's a hardware standard. Consider very carefully the position over us that such a system would put hardware makers and those with power over hardware makers in.

Now again, I'm not arguing that fakes are not a problem. They are indeed a problem. Just saying we should go about solving the problem with extreme care and caution.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#62

Articles like these make me eager for advances made in the 'authenticity' market. I recently learned of a company called Truepic[0] that specializes in photo and video verification. From the New Yorker article I read: "Truepic, a startup in San Diego, aims at producing a new kind of photograph—a verifiable digital original. Photographs taken with its smartphone app are uploaded to its servers, where they enter a kind…

And so all of human society becomes one big GAN.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#63
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're not thinking this through. Being able to prove that a video file is the unaltered output of a particular camera is in no way a useful protection against fake videos. Proving that file A is genuine tells us nothing about whether file B is fake. Let's say I want to create and circulate a fake sex tape featuring a senior politician. In a world where signed sensors are common but not mandatory, the…

Apparently, we're talking about different problems. I am talking about the problem of content creators being able to demonstrate that what they post is real footage. You're talking about the problem of someone being fooled by some arbitrary video online. If you think that the latter is somehow a fundamentally new threat created by AI, you must live in a parallel universe, to put it politely.

In what world is content creators needing to prove the footage they took is "real" a problem? Considering most content creators also do post editing I don't think that has any relationship at all to what's being discussed. We're talking about the kind of video that triggers a scandal, be it a police shooting, politician caught committing a crime, sex tape, etc. This is not the kind of thing being captured by "content creators". What's the purpose at all of what you're proposing?

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#64

Articles like these make me eager for advances made in the 'authenticity' market. I recently learned of a company called Truepic[0] that specializes in photo and video verification. From the New Yorker article I read: "Truepic, a startup in San Diego, aims at producing a new kind of photograph—a verifiable digital original. Photographs taken with its smartphone app are uploaded to its servers, where they enter a kind…

I am so tempted to reply with a BS. Because this is a super hard problem, with hundreds of edge cases making it even harder, some tried to solve it in the past, with underwhelming results.

Yes, this is utter BS, sorry.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the stakes are much higher now. See how Facebook got roped into having to do moderation !

See how it's much harder for anyone else to replace Facebook now, because they need more staff to start out with?

I don't follow ?

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#66
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetical: An anonymous source releases CCTV footage that appears to show a public figure urinating on a homeless person. Do you really believe that we'll all ignore that footage because the signature doesn't belong to a major news organisation?

Yes. We will. Because the future us will be conditioned to do so by our cryptographically integrated devices. There'll be so much fake video out there that we'll get accustomed to seeing it on our devices with the big huge "fake" sign flashing on it. (Or, again, even worse, it will not have the "real" sign flashing on it that the video from validated publishers and cameras will have.) We can be conditioned to do this…

So you're arguing that at some point in the future, nobody will give even the slightest credence to amateur footage captured on camera phones, small business CCTV systems and a million other sorts of non-corporately-owned camera? Because I think that future is worse than the one that's full of fake video.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#67
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're not thinking this through. Being able to prove that a video file is the unaltered output of a particular camera is in no way a useful protection against fake videos. Proving that file A is genuine tells us nothing about whether file B is fake. Let's say I want to create and circulate a fake sex tape featuring a senior politician. In a world where signed sensors are common but not mandatory, the…

I believe what HN User gambler was getting at is a world far more insidious. One where no one cares whether or not file B is fake. No one cares whether transcoded file C is fake. He's talking about a world where the power elites have effectively set themselves up as the only source of cryptographically secure and verified image feeds. ie - A world where so much fake image data has flooded into the zeitgeist that peop…

What in the current political climate makes you believe that, in the future, we'll trust big corporations more than we trust whichever in-group we identify with?

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#68
post #63
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, we're talking about different problems. I am talking about the problem of content creators being able to demonstrate that what they post is real footage. You're talking about the problem of someone being fooled by some arbitrary video online. If you think that the latter is somehow a fundamentally new threat created by AI, you must live in a parallel universe, to put it politely.

In what world is content creators needing to prove the footage they took is "real" a problem? Considering most content creators also do post editing I don't think that has any relationship at all to what's being discussed. We're talking about the kind of video that triggers a scandal, be it a police shooting, politician caught committing a crime, sex tape, etc. This is not the kind of thing being captured by "content…

I will try explaining this for the last time.

We already live in the word where a video is not a 100% proof that something happened. Given enough time and money you can use video editing, actors and CGI do show almost anything. This does not, however, completely invalidate all videos as evidence, because the cost of faking something is fairly high.

Deep fakes can potentially decrease the cost of impersonation of someone in any video to almost nothing.

To mitigate that we can introduce additional technologies that will bring the cost of video impersonation back up, effectively restoring the current status quo.

Like most security, it's all about the costs involved in attacks and mitigations. I remember the time where most of HN visitors understood this very well.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#69
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. We will. Because the future us will be conditioned to do so by our cryptographically integrated devices. There'll be so much fake video out there that we'll get accustomed to seeing it on our devices with the big huge "fake" sign flashing on it. (Or, again, even worse, it will not have the "real" sign flashing on it that the video from validated publishers and cameras will have.) We can be conditioned to do this…

So you're arguing that at some point in the future, nobody will give even the slightest credence to amateur footage captured on camera phones, small business CCTV systems and a million other sorts of non-corporately-owned camera? Because I think that future is worse than the one that's full of fake video.

>Because I think that future is worse than the one that's full of fake video...

That's my point.

Going down the hardware cryptography path certainly does solve the problem. I'm not here to try and claim that it doesn't. The issue is, 10 or 20 years down the road, how have humans been conditioned because of the fact that only certain cameras can be validated to be real?

If cryptography takes over, 20 years from now, no one is going to convict any guy of rape because they see him on a non-signed camera video, or a non-signed CCTV feed. (And don't get me wrong, they shouldn't convict the guy if that's the so called evidence the prosecutor has.)

What I'm asking is that everyone take a deep breath, slow down for a minute, and just think about the implications of that.

And I was being generous in the scenario I laid out here. In reality, I don't believe it would take 20 years to condition us to dismiss non-signed video out of hand.

Re: Ctrl Shift Face: A growing ‘deepfakes’ YouTube channel

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Truepic work? What's stopping me from spoofing sensor data on my client?

The point is to have an immutable source to compare against. If you suspect a video is faked, you can find the verified original video that was used to make the fake and compare against it.

What if the fake video is the first one to be uploaded?
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