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Whatever you think about this, it's here to stay - the code is open source and cached on a million hard drives already. If we treat the normal rate of progress

Whatever you think about this, it's here to stay - the code is open source and cached on a million hard drives already. If we treat the normal rate of progression, we'll see a year 2023 version for 5 bucks off the App Store, your phone will live-convert the video you're recording at your drinking party with your friends into an all celebrity event. Probably with voice swap. Your drunken roommate's scratchy voice will be ML'd into Frank Sinatra, autotuned, face swapped, and uploaded for a few laughs to facebook. It's here to stay whether you like it or not.

trs80 9y ago
Then I will exit my home with a scrambler mask.
- mental1896 9y ago
  That'll do until anti-scrambler tech comes out
  - baseten 9y ago
    it will be no match for my anti-anti-scrambler tech.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Until gov or Equifax leaks your ID photo.
petercooper 9y ago
Agreed, although I think what you're describing is how it'll be sold, yet most people will surreptitiously use it to indulge in fantasies with "normal" people which will be even more damaging. Got a picture of that co-worker you like? Congrats, now you have him/her in some porn. Interesting times for sure and I think we'll see a lot of flak and fallout in people's personal lives from their creations, far more than we see from "typical" porn use now.
- digitalsushi 9y ago
  I'm actually looking forward to living in a world in which pornography is so tailored, specific, and effective, that it becomes mundane. Maybe we'll have some other things to talk about after the world gets it out of its system. Or, we end up creating a new digital addiction that partitions a class of society into preferentially existing digitally. Maybe this can just be a precursor to a VR caste that we never see in reality.
  - prepend 9y ago
    People will have karma scores generated by the number of people using their characteristics for their virtual porn. The web will be autocrawled looking for updates to the score.
- olivermarks 9y ago
  I'm assuming nation state alphabet agency 'security services' have been using this tech for decades, and now it has become mainstream....
- cortesoft 9y ago
  How would it be more damaging? If this becomes widly used, everyone will know the videos are fake. How would it be damaging?
  - petercooper 9y ago
    I think people who are "caught" today looking at generic porn would be seen in a far more negative light if they instead had porn with the babysitter's/co-worker's/boss's face on it. I think that would be relationship-ending rather than merely an embarrassment or a career blip.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  You would need more than one picture for your training set. A minor detail, but the reasons these early products are compelling is that they are based of a large corpus of HD images taken from different perspective and angles and include various expressions and even stills while the subject is talking or laughing or expressing different emotions that a single picture of your co-worker won't.
kuschku 9y ago
I don't think it will take until 2023. iPhones and Google Pixel devices now include a special core for ML, and Snapchat already planned to move some of its filters onto it. If Snapchat adds a deepfakes filter, it'd only take a few weeks before this is mainstream.
zodPod 9y ago
This! One of the most ridiculous notions in articles about this when it first started coming out was "We should ban this technology!" and reddit started deleting threads that contained links to download the scripts and apps. Do these people still really not understand that's not how this works? Has the Streisand effect not been proven enough yet for the general populous?
- wjoe 9y ago
  One headline I saw yesterday said that these fake videos had been "deleted from the internet". I don't think they know how the internet works.
- slg 9y ago
  By that logic why should we ban any technology? Everyone here is unanimously against child porn even though we understand that it is already out there and that there is no way to put a complete stop to it. How are deepfakes that different? The truth is this technology is dangerous in the wrong hands. I don't know if that means there needs to be laws created regarding it, but I know that the difficulty in stopping it shouldn't be used as an excuse to not even debate that possibility.
  - babygoat 9y ago
    Unlike the production of child pornography, the act of writing this code didn't destroy lives. It seems quite different.
    - atomicUpdate 9y ago
      What if your face is deepfake'd onto one of the people in the child porn? My first impression is that would destroy your life if it was released.
      - nullifidian 9y ago
        Society has to come to an understanding that mere existance of a video that hasn't been cryptographically authenticated by special camera equipment is no longer evidence of anything.. Like it is with digital photography.
duxup 9y ago
I was thinking more along the lines of Star Wars.... but I'm Luke (well in the original trilogy).
- Nursie 9y ago
  That was exactly why I downloaded the software! Haven't got around to trying it yet, but I was thinking of editing myself into a bunch of movie trailers, and probably starwars.
  - duxup 9y ago
    Die Hard is next on my list.
thenomad 9y ago
Is voice conversion via ML possible yet? I know we can create vaguely convincing synthesised voices, but I've not run across a program which can take my recorded voice, and convert it to a celebrity, or even shift apparent pitch or gender convincingly.
- trevyn 9y ago
  I haven't seen it turnkey yet, but it's coming. BTW, we can create extremely convincing synthesized voices: https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/index.html https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/ind...
  - ryanbrunner 9y ago
    I was about to say that those clips still registered as a computer quite easily to me, until I got to the comparison with a human voice. I think I've just gotten so used to that voice as the "google" voice that I automatically associate it with computers. It would be strange to meet the human that was providing the human voice in those samples.
    - cannam 9y ago
      I had a very strange experience like that recently when listening to Radio 3, the BBC's mostly-classical channel. They had an opera programme with guest presenters from the Met Opera in New York. The usual BBC presenters of course have British accents, and one of these American presenters had a particular accent that my brain latched onto as matching the sound of synthetic speech. I just could not suspend disbelief and convince myself that this speech - which rationally of course I knew was human - was that of a real person rather than some sort of AI assistant. It was a very strange feeling. I did have a fever at the time, which might not have helped.
      - jobigoud 9y ago
        Maybe that person was the human source of a voice you use in text-to-speech in your GPS perhaps or book reading app?
zardo 9y ago
>your phone will live-convert the video you're recording at your drinking party with your friends into an all celebrity event. That's relatively mild compared to the really jarring possibility of your AR device doing it.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Imagine: You'll never need to see that person you don't like again.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> It's here to stay whether you like it or not. I think we're way past arguing about that. It will be interesting to see all the consequences of mass produced special effects popping up everywhere.
wmeredith 9y ago
I look forward to watching my favorite films starring me.

trs80 9y ago

Then I will exit my home with a scrambler mask.

mental1896 9y ago
That'll do until anti-scrambler tech comes out
- baseten 9y ago
  it will be no match for my anti-anti-scrambler tech.
toomuchtodo 9y ago
Until gov or Equifax leaks your ID photo.

petercooper 9y ago

Agreed, although I think what you're describing is how it'll be sold, yet most people will surreptitiously use it to indulge in fantasies with "normal" people which will be even more damaging. Got a picture of that co-worker you like? Congrats, now you have him/her in some porn. Interesting times for sure and I think we'll see a lot of flak and fallout in people's personal lives from their creations, far more than we see from "typical" porn use now.

digitalsushi 9y ago
I'm actually looking forward to living in a world in which pornography is so tailored, specific, and effective, that it becomes mundane. Maybe we'll have some other things to talk about after the world gets it out of its system. Or, we end up creating a new digital addiction that partitions a class of society into preferentially existing digitally. Maybe this can just be a precursor to a VR caste that we never see in reality.
- prepend 9y ago
  People will have karma scores generated by the number of people using their characteristics for their virtual porn. The web will be autocrawled looking for updates to the score.
olivermarks 9y ago
I'm assuming nation state alphabet agency 'security services' have been using this tech for decades, and now it has become mainstream....
cortesoft 9y ago
How would it be more damaging? If this becomes widly used, everyone will know the videos are fake. How would it be damaging?
- petercooper 9y ago
  I think people who are "caught" today looking at generic porn would be seen in a far more negative light if they instead had porn with the babysitter's/co-worker's/boss's face on it. I think that would be relationship-ending rather than merely an embarrassment or a career blip.
wavefunction 9y ago
You would need more than one picture for your training set. A minor detail, but the reasons these early products are compelling is that they are based of a large corpus of HD images taken from different perspective and angles and include various expressions and even stills while the subject is talking or laughing or expressing different emotions that a single picture of your co-worker won't.

kuschku 9y ago

I don't think it will take until 2023. iPhones and Google Pixel devices now include a special core for ML, and Snapchat already planned to move some of its filters onto it. If Snapchat adds a deepfakes filter, it'd only take a few weeks before this is mainstream.

zodPod 9y ago

This! One of the most ridiculous notions in articles about this when it first started coming out was "We should ban this technology!" and reddit started deleting threads that contained links to download the scripts and apps. Do these people still really not understand that's not how this works? Has the Streisand effect not been proven enough yet for the general populous?

wjoe 9y ago
One headline I saw yesterday said that these fake videos had been "deleted from the internet". I don't think they know how the internet works.
slg 9y ago
By that logic why should we ban any technology? Everyone here is unanimously against child porn even though we understand that it is already out there and that there is no way to put a complete stop to it. How are deepfakes that different? The truth is this technology is dangerous in the wrong hands. I don't know if that means there needs to be laws created regarding it, but I know that the difficulty in stopping it shouldn't be used as an excuse to not even debate that possibility.
- babygoat 9y ago
  Unlike the production of child pornography, the act of writing this code didn't destroy lives. It seems quite different.
  - atomicUpdate 9y ago
    What if your face is deepfake'd onto one of the people in the child porn? My first impression is that would destroy your life if it was released.
    - nullifidian 9y ago
      Society has to come to an understanding that mere existance of a video that hasn't been cryptographically authenticated by special camera equipment is no longer evidence of anything.. Like it is with digital photography.

duxup 9y ago

I was thinking more along the lines of Star Wars.... but I'm Luke (well in the original trilogy).

Nursie 9y ago
That was exactly why I downloaded the software! Haven't got around to trying it yet, but I was thinking of editing myself into a bunch of movie trailers, and probably starwars.
- duxup 9y ago
  Die Hard is next on my list.

thenomad 9y ago

Is voice conversion via ML possible yet? I know we can create vaguely convincing synthesised voices, but I've not run across a program which can take my recorded voice, and convert it to a celebrity, or even shift apparent pitch or gender convincingly.

trevyn 9y ago
I haven't seen it turnkey yet, but it's coming. BTW, we can create extremely convincing synthesized voices: https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/index.html https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/ind...
- ryanbrunner 9y ago
  I was about to say that those clips still registered as a computer quite easily to me, until I got to the comparison with a human voice. I think I've just gotten so used to that voice as the "google" voice that I automatically associate it with computers. It would be strange to meet the human that was providing the human voice in those samples.
  - cannam 9y ago
    I had a very strange experience like that recently when listening to Radio 3, the BBC's mostly-classical channel. They had an opera programme with guest presenters from the Met Opera in New York. The usual BBC presenters of course have British accents, and one of these American presenters had a particular accent that my brain latched onto as matching the sound of synthetic speech. I just could not suspend disbelief and convince myself that this speech - which rationally of course I knew was human - was that of a real person rather than some sort of AI assistant. It was a very strange feeling. I did have a fever at the time, which might not have helped.
    - jobigoud 9y ago
      Maybe that person was the human source of a voice you use in text-to-speech in your GPS perhaps or book reading app?

zardo 9y ago

>your phone will live-convert the video you're recording at your drinking party with your friends into an all celebrity event. That's relatively mild compared to the really jarring possibility of your AR device doing it.

vidarh 9y ago
Imagine: You'll never need to see that person you don't like again.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

> It's here to stay whether you like it or not. I think we're way past arguing about that. It will be interesting to see all the consequences of mass produced special effects popping up everywhere.

wmeredith 9y ago

I look forward to watching my favorite films starring me.