Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#31

Post by nylonstrung »

white-flame wrote: post #6

> It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Lots of people therefore consider some fly-by-night facebook feed that says what the majors don't to be more "trusted" in response. We shouldn't "rely" on single points of perceived trust, especially in this massive for-profit, for-po…

I think we will need to increasingly rely on cryptographic certifications of authenticity.

Instead of disproving what is fake it will be about proving what is real

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#32

Post by syshum »

untog wrote: post #11
white-flame wrote: post #6

> It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Lots of people therefore consider some fly-by-night facebook feed that says what the majors don't to be more "trusted" in response. We shouldn't "rely" on single points of perceived trust, especially in this massive for-profit, for-po…

> All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Bunching those together feels disingenuous. Do the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ, etc etc all have their own perspectives? Sure. That's bias, to an extent. But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting? To put it simply: if a reputable outlet was caught modifying a video of Trump to put words in his mouth it…

>>But when have they been corrupt? When have they manipulated their reporting?

I think this is your bias showing if you believe the New York Times, Washington Post, and WSJ are not just a manipulative in their reporting as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

Do they outright lie, of course not, but they omit things, they choose not to run some stories that do not fit their narrative, they choose to "expose" the most extreme version of the story.

The Current Gun Rights debate highlights this nicely for all of them.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#33

Post by pixel_fcker »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #26
otakucode wrote: post #16

I'm a little disappointed that it took this long for people to get over the 'OMG celebrity porno' thing about deepfakes to actually start dealing with the real potential consequences. Deepfakes open up an amazingly large list of questions, from the mundane to the truly challenging. That someone will see imagery that fulfills a sexual fantasy is, by far, one of the most trite and harmless possible uses of this technol…

> Which movie studio will be first to film a movie using cheap performers and then re-use the right they have to a major celebrities likeness by just faking them into it? I believe that studios have done with dead actors. Paul Walker and the guy who played Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One being examples that came immediately to mind.

That’s using fully digital versions of those actors though. We’re a long way from being able to use AI for those kind of performances yet.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#35

Post by Spellman »

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #12
white-flame wrote: post #6

> It's a time when we need to rely on trusted news sources That's the rub, isn't it? Who's a "trusted" new source? All the major players have shown biases, corruption, and manipulation. Lots of people therefore consider some fly-by-night facebook feed that says what the majors don't to be more "trusted" in response. We shouldn't "rely" on single points of perceived trust, especially in this massive for-profit, for-po…

The problem lies in the motive. News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. Breaking even is not enough. Doing well is not enough. Improving profit drastically quarter over quarter is the goal. To do that, you cannot simply "provide news" anymore. You need conflict. You need confirmation bias. You need to create a wild, screaming echo chamber that induces panic and fear. You need conflict,…

Go back even further and pretty much every news source was a propaganda machine. Most of the major "trusted" new sources today started primarily in yellow journalism and political attack ads. Pulitzer was not a particularly nice man. Neither was Hearst.

It was a brief modern period when news sources decided to take themselves seriously and rise up ethically and appear "unbiased" to the public. It made the landscape more consolidated and monolithic, but it also drove sources to present relatively whole stories with what limited bandwidth they had to the largest population possible.

That being said, at the same time, radio hosts quite willingly went into the base-pandering and echo chambers. Conservative Talk Radio didn't crop up in the 2000s. They arrived after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine from the FCC in 1987.

TV and print news only later realized if you insert just enough bias to make their viewers feel comfortable and to differentiate from their peers, they could make a WHOLE lot more money. And with the creation of a lot more time to sell news via 24hr channels and the Internet, you had to room to add in fluff, opinion, and other material.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#36

Post by s_m_t »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #28
JeremyMorgan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem lies in the motive. News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. Breaking even is not enough. Doing well is not enough. Improving profit drastically quarter over quarter is the goal. To do that, you cannot simply "provide news" anymore. You need conflict. You need confirmation bias. You need to create a wild, screaming echo chamber that induces panic and fear. You need conflict,…

> I remember when you had to really pay attention to catch bias in the news. I wonder about this. Part of the reason you had to pay attention was that there were far fewer information sources to check against. No one was reporting on Martin Luther King's affairs, and no one was reporting on the FBI's attempts to get MLK to commit suicide over them either.

That strikes me as some sort of backwards reasoning, people had to literally break into FBI offices and steal documents so that those things would come to be known. You can't really fault the news for not reporting on something they had, unless I'm mistaken, absolutely no way of knowing unless they were to, y'know, infiltrate the FBI.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#37

Post by roddux »

comex wrote: post #29
tschwimmer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice is just Jordan Peele (comedian) doing a Barack Obama impression. The 'AI' is in the video, specifically the lip syncing.

What’ll really be interesting is if someone gets deep voice conversion to produce a plausible output, and combines it with this technique. As is, I think it’s still not enough to really fool people, at least with that particular voice actor... But people really tend to trust voices.

I'm sure LyreBird will get there eventually: https://soundcloud.com/user-535691776/dialog

As far as I can tell, it's still early days for the audio faking side of things. I'd give it a year or two before it's indistinguishable from real voice. Then we're in trouble.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#38

Post by adamson »

walrus01 wrote: post #30

Here's what I'm worried about with fake video. If you think fake Russian bot news in US politics is a problem, consider the following. Facebook is increasingly populated with a large number of new users from developing nations who are basically one or two generations removed from subsistence farming. The level of naivete and rumor spreading that you can see in Pakistani Facebook is alarming. Now combine nation-state…

Why should we assume that being one or two generations removed from subsistence farming implies that a user is naive? There are plenty of naive persons worldwide who grew up in middle class households in the West who are just as naive. I don't think the connection is that clean.

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#39

Post by georgemcbay »

comex wrote: post #29
tschwimmer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The voice is just Jordan Peele (comedian) doing a Barack Obama impression. The 'AI' is in the video, specifically the lip syncing.

What’ll really be interesting is if someone gets deep voice conversion to produce a plausible output, and combines it with this technique. As is, I think it’s still not enough to really fool people, at least with that particular voice actor... But people really tend to trust voices.

Adobe has demoed software for this (interestingly, Jordan Peele also in this video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOpSV3ZcUcw

Whether the demo is accurate or massaged, I can't say as I've never used the software myself. But if it is anywhere near as good as their demo suggests, it produces output that is more natural than the current deepfakes video outputs (though it also isn't perfect).

Re: Fake Barack Obama delivers a PSA about “deep fakes” using a deep fake video

#40

Post by walrus01 »

adamson wrote: post #38
walrus01 wrote: post #30

Here's what I'm worried about with fake video. If you think fake Russian bot news in US politics is a problem, consider the following. Facebook is increasingly populated with a large number of new users from developing nations who are basically one or two generations removed from subsistence farming. The level of naivete and rumor spreading that you can see in Pakistani Facebook is alarming. Now combine nation-state…

Why should we assume that being one or two generations removed from subsistence farming implies that a user is naive? There are plenty of naive persons worldwide who grew up in middle class households in the West who are just as naive. I don't think the connection is that clean.

As an example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-f...

My spouse, who is a native fluent speaker of the languages, follows a large number of Dari and Urdu language Facebook groups and friends. If you think Americans have a problem with reposting stupid things that can be easily debunked by Snopes, you would not believe the amount of naivete on display daily in those language formats. It's hard to explain unless you've seen it firsthand.

People who are one generation removed from subsistence farming are not less intelligent than others. However, they and the family have had a lot less time to view mass media bullshit (tv cable news, internet, etc) and develop the mental callouses necessary to understand the nature of media biases, who owns what media organizations. And in general have had less formal secondary education at the post high school level that teaches critical thinking, skepticism and gain some degree of innoculation against propaganda.

Post reply on HN