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Tricks That Can Outsmart Deepfake Videos for Now

138 points by joewee 8y ago

tamilrockers 8y ago
some movie streaming sites using this trick also.
ycombitor 8y ago
which website are use this videos from youtube.
FredrikMeyer 8y ago
If one wants the content of this article in podcast format, the researcher was interviewed in one of the latest episodes of Data Skeptic (an excellent pod cast, by the way): https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2018/deepfakes https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2018/deepfakes
uiron 8y ago
Could not oursmart the non-clickable-on-smartphone subscription notification.
- tomrod 8y ago
  I used the Brave browser. No issue.
  - tamilmv 8y ago
    which OS this Brave browser supports. ?
mentos 8y ago
I have a feeling there will always be a way to detect trace footprints of a 'fake' but assuming the technology is perfected, what is the best way to verify that a Deepfake video is not you without analyzing the video? Thinking on this I feel like the future might require that we record our every move via some sort of verified GPS service so that you can corroborate your whereabouts. Maybe their service comes with a video recording device that can show no, 'at this date + time client was at a McDonalds drive through at 41°24'12.2"N 2°10'26.5"E here is a 452 second video of their engagement' which would overlap the supposed Deepfake timeline/video Thoughts? I imagine if the service is publicly trusted/credible then it would not need to expose the actual details of the client's whereabouts, it could just issue a true/false verification on a Deepfake based on the data held privately.
- badosu 8y ago
  Perhaps in the future there will be a step to edit videos with human oriented operations to remove artifacts?
- cpitman 8y ago
  I imagine it would work the same as any other information today, like press releases. Who is the source? Where did they get it from? Do I have any reason to doubt them? Ie, the end of "trusting" videos from unknown sources with unknown reputations and agendas.
- 14 8y ago
  Have definitely thought about this type of situation. We have the technology that you could do it, even mostly off line as storage is cheap enough a person could take a go pro and have it running at all times. I like the gps stuff but think people don't like being tracked so that wouldn't work. So instead of a service this all has to be done locally on the device so the person ultimately has control. We don't need to give out the information unless there is a reason.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  For anyone wondering, these are the coordinates of the Sagrada Familia, and yes there is a McDonalds across the street.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  The best way is probably corroborative physical evidence similar to dissecting testimony. Reminds me of the MOVE lawsuit where there were claims that people inside the compound were shooting at firefighters as the reason they pulled back. There was zero forensic proof of such encounter. Similarly if one deepfakes a clip of say George W. Bush shooting Bill Clinton in the head the fact he is alive and uninjured is proof that it is fake regardless of how sophisticated the fakery. But those are old fashioned legwork solutions. Depending on how divergent the algorithms are and how 'hand-done' they are I think a good intermediary measure would be to attempt to replicate it from scratch from other sources as itself a proof of insufficient proof. If you can take a DMV driver's license photo or other publicly available footage of your client, a scene of a robbery from a surveillance camera and put together something that looks exactly like the supposed evidence made by someone who was given only a loose description of the event you basically have proof that it is either fake or easily frameable in the same sense that a random diary that says "I am the zodiac killer - Ted Cruz" isn't admissible evidence.
amluto 8y ago
One technique I haven’t seen mentioned would be to take advantage of the fact that the world is 3D but neural networks that make fake videos are somewhat fundamentally 2D. Making good 3D computer graphics is hard and involves a lot of lighting calculations that are very different from what neural networks do. It seems like it should be possible to detect the errors that a neural network will introduce that will make the scene unphysical, at least in cases where more is modified than just small bits of geometry like the position of someone’s lips and other facial features.
- ezoe 8y ago
  I imagined the interview video where multiple light sources constantly moving for the proof that the lighting is real. Or more likely these NN-generated video fake the poor quality video and audio. The fake video author claims it was captured by hidden camera and faked person admit the fake illegal act.
- chongli 8y ago
  If you can write a function to quantify those errors, then you can use it to train the neural networks that produce the deepfakes. The better your error function, the better the deepfakes.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    Is that always true ? I know nothing about AI whatsoever but wouldn’t the function have to satisfy certain properties for a NN to be able to learn from it? Properties that the discussed “3D verifier function “ wouldn’t necessarily have? It sounds very much like complexity theory, where you definitely have problems that are easier to verify than solve (see NP hard). (Otherwise I could do stuff like use a hash function to train a NN to compute input for hashes , for example, no?)
    - sniuff 8y ago
      It will keep generating stuff until it improves score of the function, not try to satisfy the function.
cm2012 8y ago
Photoshop has been around forever but I can't remember a time any forgery caused an issue publically.
- sleepychu 8y ago
  Videos are so shareable though. The video will go viral before it's successfully disputed.
  - thekingofh 8y ago
    Images are too.
    - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
      Probably even more so than video.
- myownlittlworld 8y ago
  Have you so quickly forgotten Emma Gonzalez? We don't need Deep Fakes to cause problems, regular ones will do just fine. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-gonzalez-ripping-up-constitution/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-gonzalez-ripping-up-c...
- snowwrestler 8y ago
  The public issue usually comes when the photoshopping is discovered. National Geographic got huge public pushback when it became clear that they had "moved" Egypt's pyramids for a cover. And Iran came in for mockery when it became clear that they had photoshopped extra missiles into a launch photo. Forgeries are hugely risky for legitimate organizations; if discovered, the backlash can hurt them quite a bit. Fringe, extremist, criminal elements have used forgeries to further their goals, and they will do so with "deep fake" videos too. But our society is dominated by organizations that run on trust. And those organizations will have to quickly learn (indeed, they are learning now) how to distinguish and filter out the deep fakes. Just like they did with fake letters, fake signatures, and fake photos.
phyller 8y ago
The obvious worry about this technology is disinformation being spread, misrepresenting who people are and what they have done or said. But it also gives everyone deniability. If someone catches a powerful person assaulting someone, and actually has a video of it, they can just say it was a really good fake. How can we know?
- krastanov 8y ago
  Trust journalists with a good track record, which is the way we as a society decide whether whistle blowers are to be believed. I get that we tech people dislike relying on humans, and the libertarian among us feel particularly uncomfortable trusting the media, but there are professional investigative journalists that have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place by uncovering the truth. And they have had to deal with similar issues since forever (other types of forgeries have existed for a while). We fight this by having less partisanship and stronger free press.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    > Trust journalists with a good track record Really wish we could find a solution that didn't involve trust... rather, cryptographic proof.
    - cpitman 8y ago
      Unless you can find a way to weave cryptography into light, it will always be possible to trick a video camera into recording something that is "fake". Trust is what society is built upon, we're not going to get away from it now.
      - kakarot 8y ago
        Yes, I don't know if this problem can be solved, but it would be folly if no one was trying to crack it. We should always pursue ways to remove trust from vital social systems.
nickpsecurity 8y ago
Combat Deepfakes by doing original things regularly on your paid and/or public mediums that you incorporate randomly into new content. The fakes gotta play catch up due to training process. The more complex, subtle, and human, the better since they'll likely screw it up somehow. Just be an original, spontaneous (or more so) human from a source that people can verify. The fakes will stand out. We'll all get more interesting celebrities. The celebrities will have more fun. Everybody wins... for a while. :)
growlist 8y ago
How long until we get a deepfake filter option when shooting video, that then gives you plausible deniability should your sex tape leak..
- Trombone12 8y ago
  That sounds useful for making porn to sell, but what is the point of making your own sextape if you can't tell it's you on it? There is already loads of porn...
  - telchar 8y ago
    I suspect GP means a filter that makes the video appear to have the hallmarks of a deep fake without actually changing the apparent participants.
    - growlist 8y ago
      Exactly
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    Presumably, you would remember.
- colordrops 8y ago
  More likely will be that once deep fakes are commonplace then no video will be trusted unless cryptographically signed by the participants.
  - drb91 8y ago
    And even then, only if there’s no incentive to fake the video.
  - brownbat 8y ago
    Hmm, maybe. I wonder if it will be slightly more nuanced. Documents are forgeable, but we generally believe documentary evidence. (Well, in courts we need a person to vouch for a document, but we already also need that for video too-it's a very testimonial system.) When two people dispute authenticity (outside of courts), we reflexively gauge the credibility and perceived motives of those involved. It's a rough system, prone to error, but my point is we navigate these things socially without assuming bad faith for all documents. It's like how home locks offer close to zero protection, but they are still a normal part of our world. We can't be sure a document is real, can't be sure a lock will matter, but we are all busy, so we shrug and go on with our day in most cases.
throwawaysat20 8y ago
This reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Data figures out his “mom” is an android because her blinking follows some mathematical pattern.
iamwil 8y ago
What about using the video magnification technique to detect fakes? I'm guessing, in the same vain that the training dataset doesn't have blinking, it probably doesn't have a regular heartbeat. This is the technique I'm thinking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ASH8IBJ2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ASH8IBJ2U Perhaps you need a high framerate in order for this to work?
- johndough 8y ago
  Extracting heart beats from video with this technique only works reliably if the target is almost stationary, so a high framerate would help. However, high framerate requires bright lighting.
mistercow 8y ago
> MediFor started in 2016 when the agency saw the fakery game leveling up. The project aims to create an automated system that looks at three levels of tells, fuses them, and comes up with an “integrity score” for an image or video. That seems iffy. The problem with any automated system is that it can be used as an input into the training process. Things like matching weather reports to lighting sound more promising, because they'd require the manipulator to be more detailed in the data they collect, but that kind of thing also sounds a lot less reliable as an indicator.
jameslk 8y ago
Why not cryptographically sign videos from officials?
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Because the most politically salient and salacious videos are the ones not officially endorsed by their subjects.
  - jameslk 8y ago
    They don't have to be. The reporter/agency could sign the video.
- bhhaskin 8y ago
  This is my thoughts as well. Create a digital chain of custody using cryptography.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Well that sounds like now having two problems instead of one given that if the hypothetical 'deepfake turing test' was passed completely it would amount to giving them arbitrary faking ability trusted via authority when public trust in institutions is already on a downward trajectory. Signing it only proves that they approved of it not that it is fundamentally accurate in any way.
quotemstr 8y ago
The thing about video authentication is that any algorithm that can classify videos into "real" and "fake" categories can serve as an input to a GAN that makes more convincing videos. Any fake-detection oracle is in fact a valuable training apparatus, and distributing the things will quickly backfire. "So", you might suggest, "let's keep the classifiers secret and only reveal specific classifications to the public! The learning rate at one example of day would be terrible." Sure, this approach would stop adversarial classifiers acting as training aides, but such a thing would be socially useless, since nobody would have a reason to trust your pronouncements. I don't think there's a way anyone wins here. The end game is that we return to an almost 19th century model in which recorded media takes on a faded secondary role relative to in-person experience and trusted commentary. (And don't expect anyone to agree on who's "trusted".)
- justtopost 8y ago
  > don't expect anyone to agree on who's 'trusted' This has always been the case. I personally have issues with almost every major news outlet recently. Not just bias but blatant one-sided partisan reporting by nearly every actor. Not taking a side (nobody even remotely spoke to my values or concience) this election really opened my eyes. Both sides hatefully attacking each other for being hateful, and using that to justify further hate (of hate, so its cool, we arent all bigots right? Right!?) of the other 'side'. Neither side will even give the benefit of a doubt that what the other side does is in good faith with their values. It was kinda funny when drunk sports fans duked it out over forgone alegences to groups that don't know they exist, but its happening in casual social situations more and more. How much more of this before our own beerhall putsch moments begin? I digress... Trust is already a fickle beast. Bloomberg is wrestling with it now, no matter their rigour. Personally, I think it might be a choice, by prompting either a culture of verification and lockdown (modern china), or implied common trust in an ideal but uncertainty (i.e. early usa). Both have huge advantages, injustices, and liabilities. It seems we have approached a middle ground with few of the perks of either and many of the disadvantages to both. Perhaps there is a better way moving forward. I am personally partial to 'dangerous' freedom, over 'safe' subjugation, in all cases. As such, my values my differ may from the mean. Such a system implies personal agency, which is rejected by the popular dogmatic fatalism of 'post-meritocracy'.
bsenftner 8y ago
I get irritated seeing deep fake videos and articles, because my 2004 Master Thesis "Automated Actor Replacement in Filmed Media" details everything about how to make them, how to overcome all their integration with real media issues, as well as how to identify fakes. It further details how to integrate Deep Fake (I called them Personalized Videos) into the existing post production media industry, enabling large scale productions. I acquired a global patent, and tried to create a Personalized Advertising startup. Yet, back then, no one believed, thought it was fraud, and when they got it they hyper-focused on creating porn, which if they read my thesis turned business plan, I detail how porn is economically unprofitable as personalized videos. I tried to prove my ideas by created a "vfx at the last mile" pipeline with a small investment round, enabling media agencies to create ad with you in the Domino's pizza or rental car advertisement. It worked, feature film quality. Still they did not believe, or hyper-focused on porn. I went bankrupt, closed, and went to work in Facial Recognition, where my skills are recognized. The personal one-to-one treatment I received when pitching to entertainment studios versus that of silicon valley VCs is worthy of a book; I have zero respect for VC now: of hundreds of personal interactions, one and only one was not a social climbing, rich parents moron.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  > It worked, feature film quality. Link to examples, otherwise your comment just reads like crankery. By the way, I googled "Automated Actor Replacement in Filmed Media" and I couldn't find your Master's thesis. I could only find posts by you on HN, Quora, and other sites.
  - phpnode 8y ago
    Not the OP but I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnIVWEAPus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnIVWEAPus
    - tofof 8y ago
      https://youtu.be/1GnIVWEAPus?t=38 https://youtu.be/1GnIVWEAPus?t=38 Ah yes, feature film quality. For values of 'feature film' that approximately equal 'late-night comedy show where moving lips are overlaid on a still image'.
_up 8y ago
I wonder why they choose Obama and Hillary as examples for being deepfaked. Aren't they basically retired now?
dev_dull 8y ago
It’s really silly how people are worried about this like it’s a looming legal crisis. Have you seen the types of videos that are used in courts? They're grainy, CCTV footage with a trusted chain of custody. It’s not like they take footage from some random guy that shows a convincing, perfectly clear face. Deepfakes will have the same impact on law enforcement as convincing photoshopped pictures before. Which is to say absolutely no impact.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vitalus 8y ago
  Bystander cellphone footage is often used as evidence in courts, at least in the USA. This comment seems to imply that all court admissible video evidence comes from trusted chains of custody and thereby trusted sources, which isn't necessarily the case.
  - DINKDINK 8y ago
    >This comment seems to imply that all court admissible video evidence comes from trusted chains of custody and thereby trusted sources, which isn't necessarily the case. What's stopping a defense attorney informing a jury about DeepFakes and having that fact factor into their "beyond a reasonable doubt" criterium for criminal cases? DeepFakes have more potential in PsyOps than legal cases.
    - matt4077 8y ago
      Just informing them of that possibility will render such evidence basically useless. Once video can be faked where it can no longer be detected, video just doesn't carry any more information than, say, "we got this anonymous letter saying the defendant is guilty". So, yes, that information should be given to the jury (as soon as it becomes accurate), and it will lower the potential for false positives (convictions), but with an equal and opposite increase in false negatives.
rapind 8y ago
Couldn't this be solved with Blockchain Watermarking?

138 points by joewee 8y ago

tamilrockers 8y ago

some movie streaming sites using this trick also.

ycombitor 8y ago

which website are use this videos from youtube.

FredrikMeyer 8y ago

If one wants the content of this article in podcast format, the researcher was interviewed in one of the latest episodes of Data Skeptic (an excellent pod cast, by the way): https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2018/deepfakes https://dataskeptic.com/blog/episodes/2018/deepfakes

uiron 8y ago

Could not oursmart the non-clickable-on-smartphone subscription notification.

tomrod 8y ago
I used the Brave browser. No issue.
- tamilmv 8y ago
  which OS this Brave browser supports. ?

mentos 8y ago

I have a feeling there will always be a way to detect trace footprints of a 'fake' but assuming the technology is perfected, what is the best way to verify that a Deepfake video is not you without analyzing the video? Thinking on this I feel like the future might require that we record our every move via some sort of verified GPS service so that you can corroborate your whereabouts. Maybe their service comes with a video recording device that can show no, 'at this date + time client was at a McDonalds drive through at 41°24'12.2"N 2°10'26.5"E here is a 452 second video of their engagement' which would overlap the supposed Deepfake timeline/video Thoughts? I imagine if the service is publicly trusted/credible then it would not need to expose the actual details of the client's whereabouts, it could just issue a true/false verification on a Deepfake based on the data held privately.

badosu 8y ago
Perhaps in the future there will be a step to edit videos with human oriented operations to remove artifacts?
cpitman 8y ago
I imagine it would work the same as any other information today, like press releases. Who is the source? Where did they get it from? Do I have any reason to doubt them? Ie, the end of "trusting" videos from unknown sources with unknown reputations and agendas.
14 8y ago
Have definitely thought about this type of situation. We have the technology that you could do it, even mostly off line as storage is cheap enough a person could take a go pro and have it running at all times. I like the gps stuff but think people don't like being tracked so that wouldn't work. So instead of a service this all has to be done locally on the device so the person ultimately has control. We don't need to give out the information unless there is a reason.
jobigoud 8y ago
For anyone wondering, these are the coordinates of the Sagrada Familia, and yes there is a McDonalds across the street.
Nasrudith 8y ago
The best way is probably corroborative physical evidence similar to dissecting testimony. Reminds me of the MOVE lawsuit where there were claims that people inside the compound were shooting at firefighters as the reason they pulled back. There was zero forensic proof of such encounter. Similarly if one deepfakes a clip of say George W. Bush shooting Bill Clinton in the head the fact he is alive and uninjured is proof that it is fake regardless of how sophisticated the fakery. But those are old fashioned legwork solutions. Depending on how divergent the algorithms are and how 'hand-done' they are I think a good intermediary measure would be to attempt to replicate it from scratch from other sources as itself a proof of insufficient proof. If you can take a DMV driver's license photo or other publicly available footage of your client, a scene of a robbery from a surveillance camera and put together something that looks exactly like the supposed evidence made by someone who was given only a loose description of the event you basically have proof that it is either fake or easily frameable in the same sense that a random diary that says "I am the zodiac killer - Ted Cruz" isn't admissible evidence.

amluto 8y ago

One technique I haven’t seen mentioned would be to take advantage of the fact that the world is 3D but neural networks that make fake videos are somewhat fundamentally 2D. Making good 3D computer graphics is hard and involves a lot of lighting calculations that are very different from what neural networks do. It seems like it should be possible to detect the errors that a neural network will introduce that will make the scene unphysical, at least in cases where more is modified than just small bits of geometry like the position of someone’s lips and other facial features.

ezoe 8y ago
I imagined the interview video where multiple light sources constantly moving for the proof that the lighting is real. Or more likely these NN-generated video fake the poor quality video and audio. The fake video author claims it was captured by hidden camera and faked person admit the fake illegal act.
chongli 8y ago
If you can write a function to quantify those errors, then you can use it to train the neural networks that produce the deepfakes. The better your error function, the better the deepfakes.
- nothrabannosir 8y ago
  Is that always true ? I know nothing about AI whatsoever but wouldn’t the function have to satisfy certain properties for a NN to be able to learn from it? Properties that the discussed “3D verifier function “ wouldn’t necessarily have? It sounds very much like complexity theory, where you definitely have problems that are easier to verify than solve (see NP hard). (Otherwise I could do stuff like use a hash function to train a NN to compute input for hashes , for example, no?)
  - sniuff 8y ago
    It will keep generating stuff until it improves score of the function, not try to satisfy the function.

cm2012 8y ago

Photoshop has been around forever but I can't remember a time any forgery caused an issue publically.

sleepychu 8y ago
Videos are so shareable though. The video will go viral before it's successfully disputed.
- thekingofh 8y ago
  Images are too.
  - barbecue_sauce 8y ago
    Probably even more so than video.
myownlittlworld 8y ago
Have you so quickly forgotten Emma Gonzalez? We don't need Deep Fakes to cause problems, regular ones will do just fine. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-gonzalez-ripping-up-constitution/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/emma-gonzalez-ripping-up-c...
snowwrestler 8y ago
The public issue usually comes when the photoshopping is discovered. National Geographic got huge public pushback when it became clear that they had "moved" Egypt's pyramids for a cover. And Iran came in for mockery when it became clear that they had photoshopped extra missiles into a launch photo. Forgeries are hugely risky for legitimate organizations; if discovered, the backlash can hurt them quite a bit. Fringe, extremist, criminal elements have used forgeries to further their goals, and they will do so with "deep fake" videos too. But our society is dominated by organizations that run on trust. And those organizations will have to quickly learn (indeed, they are learning now) how to distinguish and filter out the deep fakes. Just like they did with fake letters, fake signatures, and fake photos.

phyller 8y ago

The obvious worry about this technology is disinformation being spread, misrepresenting who people are and what they have done or said. But it also gives everyone deniability. If someone catches a powerful person assaulting someone, and actually has a video of it, they can just say it was a really good fake. How can we know?

krastanov 8y ago
Trust journalists with a good track record, which is the way we as a society decide whether whistle blowers are to be believed. I get that we tech people dislike relying on humans, and the libertarian among us feel particularly uncomfortable trusting the media, but there are professional investigative journalists that have dedicated their lives to making the world a better place by uncovering the truth. And they have had to deal with similar issues since forever (other types of forgeries have existed for a while). We fight this by having less partisanship and stronger free press.
- kakarot 8y ago
  > Trust journalists with a good track record Really wish we could find a solution that didn't involve trust... rather, cryptographic proof.
  - cpitman 8y ago
    Unless you can find a way to weave cryptography into light, it will always be possible to trick a video camera into recording something that is "fake". Trust is what society is built upon, we're not going to get away from it now.
    - kakarot 8y ago
      Yes, I don't know if this problem can be solved, but it would be folly if no one was trying to crack it. We should always pursue ways to remove trust from vital social systems.

nickpsecurity 8y ago

Combat Deepfakes by doing original things regularly on your paid and/or public mediums that you incorporate randomly into new content. The fakes gotta play catch up due to training process. The more complex, subtle, and human, the better since they'll likely screw it up somehow. Just be an original, spontaneous (or more so) human from a source that people can verify. The fakes will stand out. We'll all get more interesting celebrities. The celebrities will have more fun. Everybody wins... for a while. :)

growlist 8y ago

How long until we get a deepfake filter option when shooting video, that then gives you plausible deniability should your sex tape leak..

Trombone12 8y ago
That sounds useful for making porn to sell, but what is the point of making your own sextape if you can't tell it's you on it? There is already loads of porn...
- telchar 8y ago
  I suspect GP means a filter that makes the video appear to have the hallmarks of a deep fake without actually changing the apparent participants.
  - growlist 8y ago
    Exactly
- umanwizard 8y ago
  Presumably, you would remember.
colordrops 8y ago
More likely will be that once deep fakes are commonplace then no video will be trusted unless cryptographically signed by the participants.
- drb91 8y ago
  And even then, only if there’s no incentive to fake the video.
- brownbat 8y ago
  Hmm, maybe. I wonder if it will be slightly more nuanced. Documents are forgeable, but we generally believe documentary evidence. (Well, in courts we need a person to vouch for a document, but we already also need that for video too-it's a very testimonial system.) When two people dispute authenticity (outside of courts), we reflexively gauge the credibility and perceived motives of those involved. It's a rough system, prone to error, but my point is we navigate these things socially without assuming bad faith for all documents. It's like how home locks offer close to zero protection, but they are still a normal part of our world. We can't be sure a document is real, can't be sure a lock will matter, but we are all busy, so we shrug and go on with our day in most cases.

throwawaysat20 8y ago

This reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Data figures out his “mom” is an android because her blinking follows some mathematical pattern.

iamwil 8y ago

What about using the video magnification technique to detect fakes? I'm guessing, in the same vain that the training dataset doesn't have blinking, it probably doesn't have a regular heartbeat. This is the technique I'm thinking about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ASH8IBJ2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ASH8IBJ2U Perhaps you need a high framerate in order for this to work?

johndough 8y ago
Extracting heart beats from video with this technique only works reliably if the target is almost stationary, so a high framerate would help. However, high framerate requires bright lighting.

mistercow 8y ago

> MediFor started in 2016 when the agency saw the fakery game leveling up. The project aims to create an automated system that looks at three levels of tells, fuses them, and comes up with an “integrity score” for an image or video. That seems iffy. The problem with any automated system is that it can be used as an input into the training process. Things like matching weather reports to lighting sound more promising, because they'd require the manipulator to be more detailed in the data they collect, but that kind of thing also sounds a lot less reliable as an indicator.

jameslk 8y ago

Why not cryptographically sign videos from officials?

quotemstr 8y ago
Because the most politically salient and salacious videos are the ones not officially endorsed by their subjects.
- jameslk 8y ago
  They don't have to be. The reporter/agency could sign the video.
bhhaskin 8y ago
This is my thoughts as well. Create a digital chain of custody using cryptography.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Well that sounds like now having two problems instead of one given that if the hypothetical 'deepfake turing test' was passed completely it would amount to giving them arbitrary faking ability trusted via authority when public trust in institutions is already on a downward trajectory. Signing it only proves that they approved of it not that it is fundamentally accurate in any way.

quotemstr 8y ago

The thing about video authentication is that any algorithm that can classify videos into "real" and "fake" categories can serve as an input to a GAN that makes more convincing videos. Any fake-detection oracle is in fact a valuable training apparatus, and distributing the things will quickly backfire. "So", you might suggest, "let's keep the classifiers secret and only reveal specific classifications to the public! The learning rate at one example of day would be terrible." Sure, this approach would stop adversarial classifiers acting as training aides, but such a thing would be socially useless, since nobody would have a reason to trust your pronouncements. I don't think there's a way anyone wins here. The end game is that we return to an almost 19th century model in which recorded media takes on a faded secondary role relative to in-person experience and trusted commentary. (And don't expect anyone to agree on who's "trusted".)

justtopost 8y ago
> don't expect anyone to agree on who's 'trusted' This has always been the case. I personally have issues with almost every major news outlet recently. Not just bias but blatant one-sided partisan reporting by nearly every actor. Not taking a side (nobody even remotely spoke to my values or concience) this election really opened my eyes. Both sides hatefully attacking each other for being hateful, and using that to justify further hate (of hate, so its cool, we arent all bigots right? Right!?) of the other 'side'. Neither side will even give the benefit of a doubt that what the other side does is in good faith with their values. It was kinda funny when drunk sports fans duked it out over forgone alegences to groups that don't know they exist, but its happening in casual social situations more and more. How much more of this before our own beerhall putsch moments begin? I digress... Trust is already a fickle beast. Bloomberg is wrestling with it now, no matter their rigour. Personally, I think it might be a choice, by prompting either a culture of verification and lockdown (modern china), or implied common trust in an ideal but uncertainty (i.e. early usa). Both have huge advantages, injustices, and liabilities. It seems we have approached a middle ground with few of the perks of either and many of the disadvantages to both. Perhaps there is a better way moving forward. I am personally partial to 'dangerous' freedom, over 'safe' subjugation, in all cases. As such, my values my differ may from the mean. Such a system implies personal agency, which is rejected by the popular dogmatic fatalism of 'post-meritocracy'.

bsenftner 8y ago

I get irritated seeing deep fake videos and articles, because my 2004 Master Thesis "Automated Actor Replacement in Filmed Media" details everything about how to make them, how to overcome all their integration with real media issues, as well as how to identify fakes. It further details how to integrate Deep Fake (I called them Personalized Videos) into the existing post production media industry, enabling large scale productions. I acquired a global patent, and tried to create a Personalized Advertising startup. Yet, back then, no one believed, thought it was fraud, and when they got it they hyper-focused on creating porn, which if they read my thesis turned business plan, I detail how porn is economically unprofitable as personalized videos. I tried to prove my ideas by created a "vfx at the last mile" pipeline with a small investment round, enabling media agencies to create ad with you in the Domino's pizza or rental car advertisement. It worked, feature film quality. Still they did not believe, or hyper-focused on porn. I went bankrupt, closed, and went to work in Facial Recognition, where my skills are recognized. The personal one-to-one treatment I received when pitching to entertainment studios versus that of silicon valley VCs is worthy of a book; I have zero respect for VC now: of hundreds of personal interactions, one and only one was not a social climbing, rich parents moron.

umanwizard 8y ago
> It worked, feature film quality. Link to examples, otherwise your comment just reads like crankery. By the way, I googled "Automated Actor Replacement in Filmed Media" and I couldn't find your Master's thesis. I could only find posts by you on HN, Quora, and other sites.
- phpnode 8y ago
  Not the OP but I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnIVWEAPus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GnIVWEAPus
  - tofof 8y ago
    https://youtu.be/1GnIVWEAPus?t=38 https://youtu.be/1GnIVWEAPus?t=38 Ah yes, feature film quality. For values of 'feature film' that approximately equal 'late-night comedy show where moving lips are overlaid on a still image'.

_up 8y ago

I wonder why they choose Obama and Hillary as examples for being deepfaked. Aren't they basically retired now?

dev_dull 8y ago

It’s really silly how people are worried about this like it’s a looming legal crisis. Have you seen the types of videos that are used in courts? They're grainy, CCTV footage with a trusted chain of custody. It’s not like they take footage from some random guy that shows a convincing, perfectly clear face. Deepfakes will have the same impact on law enforcement as convincing photoshopped pictures before. Which is to say absolutely no impact.

deleted 8y ago
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vitalus 8y ago
Bystander cellphone footage is often used as evidence in courts, at least in the USA. This comment seems to imply that all court admissible video evidence comes from trusted chains of custody and thereby trusted sources, which isn't necessarily the case.
- DINKDINK 8y ago
  >This comment seems to imply that all court admissible video evidence comes from trusted chains of custody and thereby trusted sources, which isn't necessarily the case. What's stopping a defense attorney informing a jury about DeepFakes and having that fact factor into their "beyond a reasonable doubt" criterium for criminal cases? DeepFakes have more potential in PsyOps than legal cases.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    Just informing them of that possibility will render such evidence basically useless. Once video can be faked where it can no longer be detected, video just doesn't carry any more information than, say, "we got this anonymous letter saying the defendant is guilty". So, yes, that information should be given to the jury (as soon as it becomes accurate), and it will lower the potential for false positives (convictions), but with an equal and opposite increase in false negatives.

rapind 8y ago

Couldn't this be solved with Blockchain Watermarking?