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AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

lawfaremedia.org

131–140 of 171 posts

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#131
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lawyer who was convicted on one of those. The detectives had the mic + transmitter taped to his groin so it would get through a pat down. Then the undercover just spoke both sides of the conversation (the defendant's side was whispered and muffled). Someone testified it sounded like the defendant. Conviction was overturned on appeal on a simpler issue unrelated to the evidence. In fact, I remember a drug dea…

So what happened to him?

I refer you to the precedent of Snitches v. Stitches

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#132
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think forensic analysis of photographs would reveal pretty quickly if they’re AI anyway. AI images of real life still don’t pass intense scrutiny.

And we have been able to edit photos nearly as long as we have been able to make them. Yet photo evidence continues being useful

I won't deny that genAI is still a long way from passing the strictest scrutiny, but I don't like the above argument. Ease of use is not a trivial matter, and extreme advances in accessibility can cause a phase-change. Photo evidence continues to be useful because editing photos is below the critical threshold for becoming a problem. If it becomes easy, low-skill, and reliable, at that point we will cross into the realm of Reasonable Doubt. It's the difference between possible, and practical, and pervasive.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#133
post #91
post #2

Sounds like reasonable changes. Generally speaking, I think evidence tampering is not a new problem, and even though it's easy in some cases, I don't think it's _that_ widespread. Just like it's possible to lie on the stand, but people usually think twice before they do it, because _if_ they are found to have lied, they're in trouble. My main concern is rather that legit evidence can now easily be called into questio…

I kind of want to have an LLM which takes absolutely any criticism of AI or news of it doing something bad and then generates a plausible HN comment that basically goes "I don't think it's a new problem, X has always been possible, there's nothing really new"... because that comment always appears like clockwork beneath it :)

The nuance that's usually missing is that new technology invariably enables the same things but more of them and faster.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#134
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of want to have an LLM which takes absolutely any criticism of AI or news of it doing something bad and then generates a plausible HN comment that basically goes "I don't think it's a new problem, X has always been possible, there's nothing really new"... because that comment always appears like clockwork beneath it :)

The nuance that's usually missing is that new technology invariably enables the same things but more of them and faster.

Everyone misses this all the time.

Most problems can be overlooked because they’re not that prolific. There’s a chain of events that really hinges on that assumption.

For example, piracy is really not a problem. In fact I’m pro-piracy most of the time. But if everyone could pirate with no thought and no down time, I don’t think our economy will survive. Just because something is okay in small doses doesn’t mean it scales well. We understand this intuitively with substances, but not with technology like LLMs.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#135
post #2

Sounds like reasonable changes. Generally speaking, I think evidence tampering is not a new problem, and even though it's easy in some cases, I don't think it's _that_ widespread. Just like it's possible to lie on the stand, but people usually think twice before they do it, because _if_ they are found to have lied, they're in trouble. My main concern is rather that legit evidence can now easily be called into questio…

That's a great point. The ability to undermine real evidence by claiming it's AI-generated could be just as (if not more) damaging than fake evidence itself

Well, and to generate fake evidence to lead cops off the trail for the longest period of time possible. Evidence could be said to contain a half life. The longer (real) evidence is not gathered the more it can decay in one way or another. For example security footage gets overwritten. Actual witness memory gets foggy. Physical items get thrown away.

If the cops spend the first month going after some poor Mark that had nothing to do with it, by the time they realize they've been had it will likely be much more difficult to catch the actual perp.

Also, that's saying nothing about the court of public opinion.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#136
post #128
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say we'd be quite back to pre-photo evidence days. I feel a lot if not most of the value in a video/audio recording is not just that the medium has traditionally been difficult to edit, but that it's attesting to a lot of details with high specificity. There's a lot to potentially get caught out on with not a lot of wiggle room when inconsistencies are spotted (compared to recalling from memory). Document…

I think forensic analysis of photographs would reveal pretty quickly if they’re AI anyway. AI images of real life still don’t pass intense scrutiny.

Right... forensics, the famously reliable discipline.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#137
post #120
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm not arguing "good riddance". I just optimistically think we'll manage. I wouldn't want to miss any of the things you listed, actually. I'd also prefer evidence tampering to be impossible or at least very difficult. But that's not a call I can make. All I can decide about things out of my control, is how I think about it. And here I'm carefully optimistic.

But your argument for why we can live without audio or video evidence was that we lived like that before. All I'm saying is that's not a great argument. You can probably come up with other arguments and they might be perfectly valid.

I mean, technically, a lot of murders did get away with their crimes in the days before video evidence, so there is that.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#138
post #23

I'll say it again, even though it is rather unpopular here: there has never been a need to develop these tools, nor one to make them easy to deploy, nor one to make them easy to use. Yet all this has happened, and now it may occur that someone is acquitted because AI generated media is so good, the evidence might be artificial. If that happens, and the suspect commits another crime, it's on the conscience of the peop…

You cannot create something and pretend its use has nothing to do with you. has always worked with guns so it'll always work with anything else :) and guns will kill more people that AI-generated shit for foreseeable future

Text, images, and things of that class - human communication tools - are much higher level than guns.

Human communication tools are responsible for, say, the holocaust. At its core, you can distill the holocaust to that. Or choose any tragedy, really.

I think what we’re dealing with is much worse than we are giving it credit. I’m envisioning the death of trust as a concept itself. Such has never before been faced by humanity, and I don’t know if even our biological social circuits can handle it.

We’re already half way there. It’s trivial to convince large amount of people of something that isn’t true, and then get them to act on that belief. It just requires some time and some money. Remove the time and the money requirement and I don’t know where we land.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#139
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of want to have an LLM which takes absolutely any criticism of AI or news of it doing something bad and then generates a plausible HN comment that basically goes "I don't think it's a new problem, X has always been possible, there's nothing really new"... because that comment always appears like clockwork beneath it :)

The nuance that's usually missing is that new technology invariably enables the same things but more of them and faster.

A snowflake isn't an avalanche, but if you let them build up, there is potential.

Re: AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court

#140
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredible line to end on. “It’s not normal to read/write”.

I'm not aware of any other species which is capable of reading and writing. But many can certainly hear and make sounds.

Yes, return to monkey. And, somehow, this will make life… better?
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