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Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

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Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#71

Deep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers i…

that's an issue with electing presidents and powerful people that are over 70 years old lol

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#72

Deep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers i…

We’ve had photographic deep fakes for decades now. How does this fundamentally change anything more than Photoshop already did?

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#73

The audio is so realistic. I could have been fooled easily.

I am more curious how they did the audio than the video. From experience, it's not nearly as easy to clone someone's voice as you might think. It might be that they just found a good voice actor. That's what most deepfake videos do now. But maybe someday it will be possible to press a button and hear a beautiful result.

The audio is also generated. We used speech2speech voice conversion for this, so it is indeed more involving than TTS, for instance, but also more expressive and controllable. Here's another example: https://youtu.be/t5yw5cR79VA

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#74
post #65

Deep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers i…

So you think it would be better if politicians have a knee jerk emotional reaction like with 3d printed guns and start shutting down research and making it a felony to publish deep fake videos?

Another recent example where regulations were (relatively) quick to address some new tech/gadget: drones.

It was recognized by law makers that drones could be used for nefarious purposes and needed some form of regulation.

I'm not saying that drone registration thwarts illegal use, but at least something was done by regulators.

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#75

Deep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers i…

I'm curious to know why you feel like regulation and standards are the solution here. It seems fairly clear that the propaganda metagame heavily favors disinformation and is only getting better at creating disinformation products. If we accept that premise, then it seems like the real problem is that we're still trying to preserve the idea that the internet is a tool for learning. Certainly parts of the internet are, but if the bloggers vs. professional press are anything to go by then it seems like the most practical solution is to establish lists of trusted entities and the contexts in which they're trusted. The managing of lists is regulatory in a sense but the trust side of the equation seems more social than bureaucratic, people need to be much less trustful of the internet.

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#76
post #31

Part of me feels that the widespread proliferation of deep fakes can potentially be positive. Seeing will no longer be believing and society will be forced to look at things with a more critical and skeptical eye or with a higher level of diligence. Value should also shift back to more legitimate sources. The transition will certainly suck though.

More likely it will further reinforce echo chambers so that people will truly only see what they want to believe and nothing more. Anything they disagree with or is inconvenient to their worldview is "deep fake"

What’s the difference with today “fake news” outrage for absolutely real news?

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#77
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But think of the general US electorate. How many of them, seeing this clip on the news as they prepare dinner, would know it’s fake? The technology to fool someone who has the TV on in the background has existed forever. You could do it with a stunt double. The problem is fooling everyone such that "this video is faked" doesn't become a bigger story than the fake video in the first place.

Some people would demand fake videos supporting their point of view be taken seriously. Also, it isn't difficult to imagine a future where people are criticized for correctly identifying deep fakes.

Exactly. We've seen this in responses to (for example) the Rolling Stone fake sexual assault story. Many people said "the problem is real even if this story may not be."

So people may push fake stories to make what they believe to be a justified point.

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#78

Part of me feels that the widespread proliferation of deep fakes can potentially be positive. Seeing will no longer be believing and society will be forced to look at things with a more critical and skeptical eye or with a higher level of diligence. Value should also shift back to more legitimate sources. The transition will certainly suck though.

That's only the case if making the fakes becomes a very easy and common thing to do. I think more likely the case will be that certain already-powerful groups will have more ability to make these fakes and thus actually make the balance of information influence even worse.

There are already very good porn videos with celebrities, probably not as good as this, but is just a matter of time. The barriers to enter are really low, you don’t need the already-powerful groups.

Re: Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

#80

Deep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers i…

People have been faking videos for as long as video has existed. Deepfakes is just a scary new word for what people would call "CGI" or "VFX".
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