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

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

#41

Post by da_chicken »

TillE wrote: post #13

That sounds like a really bad Obama impersonator. The video is OK but still obviously fake. If you look at the progression of film CGI, with its persistent flaws despite massive budgets, there's no reason to suspect that indistinguishable fakes are coming any time soon.

We've been able to fake voice recordings for decades. Doing it again is not the impressive part of the video. It's a tech demo for the video showing how close it is to working. The point of the video is that this was made with Adobe After Effects and FakeApp and 56 hours of rendering time. COTS software on COTS hardware.

You won't even need a good impersonator, however. The same technology behind FakeApp that blends this video together could be used to blend audio together.

This is supposed to look fake and sound fake because you're supposed to see it as fake. What happens when that isn't true anymore?

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

#42

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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.

It has already been done. 20 years ago a research team created a very convincing fake Whoopie Goldberg. Never heard about it since. Anyone's guess who blacked out that technology.

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

#43

Post by robotrout »

nylonstrung wrote: post #31
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

What does that mean? That my camera will embed a cryptographic certification into the video?

I suspect people would be able to disassemble a camera and cause it to certify video that originated in a fake news studio.

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

#44

Post by ggg9990 »

colordrops wrote: post #24
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,…

> News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. That's an over-simplication. Sure, Jeff Bezos probably wants to make a profit with his purchase of the Washington Post. But the profits there are probably not his main objective as they are too small to make much of a difference to a person of Bezo's wealth. Bezo's goal is to have a mouthpiece to push his agendas, such as pushing Amazon and tra…

Thinking that Bezos wanted WaPo to advocate for Amazon and trash Musk is to treat him as a rich person, not the wealthy person that he actually is.

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

#45

Post by AnimalMuppet »

syshum wrote: post #32
untog wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ver…

I think CNN was clearly corrupt in the last election cycle. That's pretty well documented (especially helping Hillary against Bernie). It wasn't just "manipulative in their reporting". It was out-and-out helping a campaign win.

Are the NYT, WP, and WSJ biased? Sure. Are they corrupt in the sense that CNN was? I haven't seen evidence of it.

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

#46

Post by cheez »

walrus01 wrote: post #40
adamson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your example is literally of a farmer who is 0 generations removed from sustenance farming.

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

#47

Post by amoorthy »

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…

You are correct that all sources have bias. It's difficult for readers to check every article for this and gauge their credibility. So my startup, CivikOwl, built a Chrome extension that makes it easy to check the quality of citations in an article and scores it based on this and other signals.

If you're interested check it out: http://www.civikowl.com. Feedback welcome (If you want to check out beta mobile app hit me up: arjunm at civikowl dot com)

(There's also a whole business model behind this that helps news orgs move away from reliance on ads but that's a longer discussion).

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

#48

Post by darepublic »

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 don't trust any mainstream media source because their biases are so obvious by what they choose and choose not to report.

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

#49

Post by philwelch »

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,…

It's not even a question of partisan bias; it's a question of sensationalism. It doesn't begin and end with how news organizations cover events; it begins with what events they choose to cover.

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

#50

Post by kelnos »

ggg9990 wrote: post #44
colordrops wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> News organizations are (not surprisingly) entirely motivated by profit. That's an over-simplication. Sure, Jeff Bezos probably wants to make a profit with his purchase of the Washington Post. But the profits there are probably not his main objective as they are too small to make much of a difference to a person of Bezo's wealth. Bezo's goal is to have a mouthpiece to push his agendas, such as pushing Amazon and tra…

Thinking that Bezos wanted WaPo to advocate for Amazon and trash Musk is to treat him as a rich person, not the wealthy person that he actually is.

Could you explain what you mean by the difference in a person who is "rich" vs. "wealthy"? I don't think that's coming through in your comment.
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