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Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life
- hello_1234 7y agoThe audio is so realistic. I could have been fooled easily.
- umvi 7y agoAnd how do you know this video isn't real history and all the other Apollo videos aren't deep fakes? Answer seems obvious now, but once the generation that was alive during Apollo dies off, this is a likely conspiracy candidate that will take root in some skeptical future generation. We are increasingly living in an age of misinformation where it is becoming more difficult to tell what is true and what is not without significant effort. This tech I'm sure CCP will use extensively to shape history/propaganda however they want.
- roywiggins 7y agoMoon landing conspiracies have already formed a very robust community on YouTube.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoI am more curious how they did the audio than the video. From experience, it's not nearly as easy to clone someone's voice as you might think. It might be that they just found a good voice actor. That's what most deepfake videos do now. But maybe someday it will be possible to press a button and hear a beautiful result.
- wtfrmyinitials 7y agoPossibly also generated. From the top of HN last week: "AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21525878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21525878
- belevtsoff 7y agoThe audio is also generated. We used speech2speech voice conversion for this, so it is indeed more involving than TTS, for instance, but also more expressive and controllable. Here's another example: https://youtu.be/t5yw5cR79VA https://youtu.be/t5yw5cR79VA
- TimMurnaghan 7y agoIt still looks wrong. There's still some of the floating/stuck-on head feeling about it. Or is that just because we already know it's fake from the headline? (... and the way that the flag moves is totally wrong .../s).
- dwoozle 7y agoNo one says that deep fakes are production ready today... but given the speed of progress, they’re going to be in FAR less time than takes for our social and political systems to mount a response, so there’s going to be some fucked up consequences of them.
- asdfman123 7y agoThat's true, but you have to also realize that Nixon looks wrong on TV in general. Maybe they did too good of a deep-fake. ;)
- jedberg 7y agoYou’d have to be paying real close attention to notice that, which you are primed to do because you’ve been told it’s a deep fake. You’re probably also more of an expert than most. But think of the general US electorate. How many of them, seeing this clip on the news as they prepare dinner, would know it’s fake?
- jdminhbg 7y ago> But think of the general US electorate. How many of them, seeing this clip on the news as they prepare dinner, would know it’s fake? The technology to fool someone who has the TV on in the background has existed forever. You could do it with a stunt double. The problem is fooling everyone such that "this video is faked" doesn't become a bigger story than the fake video in the first place.
- scj 7y agoSome people would demand fake videos supporting their point of view be taken seriously. Also, it isn't difficult to imagine a future where people are criticized for correctly identifying deep fakes.
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- daniel-thompson 7y agoI was kinda hoping they would have done this version of the speech -> https://lifestyle.clickhole.com/this-speech-was-written-for-president-nixon-to-deliver-1825121627 https://lifestyle.clickhole.com/this-speech-was-written-for-...
- HansHamster 7y agoObligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1484/ https://xkcd.com/1484/
- rangibaby 7y agoThis is way too perfect. If it didn’t know it was a deep fake I would think it’s real. Fake Richard Nixon looks and sounds genuinely upset.
- bem94 7y agoI find this as interesting as I do worrying. Given our tenuous grasp of shared facts and basis for (political) relality these days, making videos like this just seems irresponsible. We don't need any more fuel for the fire: "They faked this Nixon Video, so they could have faked <X> too!"
- ISL 7y agoWell, in this case, they would be correct. Finding a reliable way to exchange trusted information is a central problem of our time.
- pjc50 7y agoThere's already an outbreak of "fakes" by the simple technique of misleading editing: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-ira-video-tories-attacked-fake-news-edited-labour-leader-refusal-condemn-sky-news-election-a7770026.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/corbyn-ira-vi... https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-release-another-misleading-video-20928508 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-release-anothe...
- duskwuff 7y agoAnd it doesn't even have to be sophisticated editing. Slowing down a video of a person speaking is enough to fool a lot of viewers into thinking that person is drunk: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-pelosi-videos-slowed-make-her-appear-drunk-spread-across-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/23/faked-p...
- mac01021 7y agoIs there any reason it should be a worse problem for video than it's been for print over the last 20 years?
- V-2 7y ago"I saw it with my own eyes" is inherently more convincing than "someone told me [in writing] how it is". It will be naturally harder for humans to reject false recordings as deceitful.
- lefstathiou 7y agoPart of me feels that the widespread proliferation of deep fakes can potentially be positive. Seeing will no longer be believing and society will be forced to look at things with a more critical and skeptical eye or with a higher level of diligence. Value should also shift back to more legitimate sources. The transition will certainly suck though.
- egdod 7y agoThat’s awfully optimistic. Even when seeing shouldn't be believing, people still will.
- personjerry 7y agoThat's only the case if making the fakes becomes a very easy and common thing to do. I think more likely the case will be that certain already-powerful groups will have more ability to make these fakes and thus actually make the balance of information influence even worse.
- tigershark 7y agoThere are already very good porn videos with celebrities, probably not as good as this, but is just a matter of time. The barriers to enter are really low, you don’t need the already-powerful groups.
- axiomdata316 7y agoMore likely everything even legitimate things will be 'poo pooed' as fake. Believing in nothing is as dangerous as believing everything. It's both a form of credulity.
- umvi 7y agoMore likely it will further reinforce echo chambers so that people will truly only see what they want to believe and nothing more. Anything they disagree with or is inconvenient to their worldview is "deep fake"
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- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoI find it amusing that Congress has suddenly become so interested in the dangers of deep fakes. When they started going on and on about the dangers I thought “why is this dude so worried?”. Then of course the Epstein stuff becomes news[1] months later and the cynical part of me can’t help but think they’re looking for a defense if they ever partied at his island or ranch. 1. https://nypost.com/2019/11/18/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-claims-he-hid-pinhole-cameras-to-monitor-private-moments/ https://nypost.com/2019/11/18/jeffrey-epstein-accuser-claims...
- ISL 7y agoDeepfakes are readily understandable as a problem for politicians. Politicians are experts in public messaging; this technology has the ability to alter previously-immutable messages.
- makerofspoons 7y agoI hadn't thought about how deep fakes could help us explore alternate history before. That's a chilling clip.
- awinter-py 7y agoeat your heart out bill safire
- eutropia 7y agoWe should be less worried about overt propaganda like DeepFakes and more worried about the assumptions baked into the media of all imperialist nations, the misdirection, and the selection of "what" to report on. States have been lying to us since time immemorial, and they don't need fancy video evidence to do it. But this is a cool demo, and since the Genie is out of the bottle, this can be a great tool. You could use it to force those who speak in public the most to be accountable for the things that they don't say, or equivocate on, by making videos of them saying it, and forcing them to go on the record denying the video, in contradiction to their established (unspoken) position.
- uponcoffee 7y ago> States have been lying to us since time immemorial, and they don't need fancy video evidence to do it. True, but now they'll be able to drive any narrative with as much A/V 'evidence' as they want. Lies by omission or one sided reporting are dangerous in their own right, but challenging that is different from challenging fake evidence. It's hard to say "It wasn't me" if you're on tape/film. You'd have to have experts argue over validity but the public doesn't have the attention span or trust to follow that. Deepfakes have the potential to be extremely damning/damaging to public image/reputation in a way that biased reporting never did.
- larnmar 7y agoWhat is a non-“imperialist” nation, and what makes you think their media is any better? The rest of your comment I agree with, but attributing it to “the media of imperialist nations” instead of just being a property of media organisations in general, is wrong.
- eutropia 7y agoI mean states which are ruled democratically rather than by elites. This means that the implicit bias in a democratic media is that of serving the people and exposing truth rather than covering for corpo-fascists and state-sponsered terrorism. There's such a thing as genuinely good reporting and integrity in journalism (even in authoritarian states)- it just needs to also be free of coercion and aware of the frame of reference that it exists in.
- carapace 7y agoAs the technology to do this becomes exponentially cheaper, integrity (in all it's ramifications) becomes exponentially more valuable. - - - - Sooner or later, nanotech will mature and all of this will escape the digital realm (largely photons and electrons) into "real" life (IRL) (protons and neutrons) and we'll have to deal with that.
- altoidaltoid 7y agoThe Running Man movie is coming to life.
- jonas21 7y agoHow long before all the moon landing hoax people start pointing at this and saying, "see, I told you so."?
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThere is literally a mirror in the moon you can get a reflection from it you know where to look. Mom landing hoaxers don't need evidence to believe what they believe.
- umvi 7y agoI mean, it's a little more difficult than that. You need an expensive high powered laser only available at universities and precision calibration and timing equipment to fire and detect the return pulse. It's not like you can just pull out a hobby telescope and be like "oh look, a tiny mirror next to an american flag"
- boksiora 7y agoHere are other examples of deep fakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puBQ_r7ox8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puBQ_r7ox8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw
- xf00 7y agoAt the end of the day, our only defense against deepfakes is going to be to disregard the supposed identity of the speaker and only judge the content itself. Easier said than done.
- canada_dry 7y agoDeep fakes are yet another prime example of how the writing is on the wall (i.e. it's clear that this technology can/will be used for nefarious purposes - esp. by our enemies) and yet mitigations - through regulation and enhanced standards - won't be pursued until long after the horses have left the barn. I don't know how/what form this should take, but an older analogy might be how colour photocopier manufacturers imbed microdots into each reproduction so counterfeit bills can be traced to the equipment that produced them.
- javanix 7y agoWhat regulations / standards would actually stop these things from getting out though?
- eyegor 7y agoThe only answer here is drm esque file signing. Any attempts at detecting fakes will only work while the tech is young. Ofc this requires a web of trust and verification techniques to be applied, since videos are often re encoded.
- make3 7y agoyou mean for literally every piece of video taken everywhere..
- saalweachter 7y agoOk, I've signed my cellphone footage of a crime being committed. Now what? How does that prove my footage was taken where I said, when I said?
- eyegor 7y agoI was thinking more along the lines of hardware manufacturers implementing a secure enclave style of signing files as they're recorded. The sig could be tagged with location/date if available, but at least the video would be verifiable. The web of trust would have to exist for reprocessors and media outlets who like to edit footage.
- surfsvammel 7y agoWe need ways to sign or put signatures in videos that proves their authenticity. Not sure how such a thing would work though... I guess, in the world of blockchain, we could guarantee it’s origin at least.
- ReptileMan 7y agoYup. Let's prevent anonymous video recording and dissemination... I think that for any instinctive reaction like that you should ask - will authoritarian governments want this effect. If the answer is yes you should think this trough.
- Nasrudith 7y agoThe common mistake with signing schemes is assuming that it actually means anything on its own. There is no need to it. That would only make sense if you want to mark something as offical and have authorative sourcing. It would have a place for chains of command and actually signed off on orders but not evidence that the content is true. An offically signed video of the president punching Adolf Hitler in the groin, High Fiving George Washington, and then flying off into space could be cryptographically valid although obviously fake. It would only say that the President actually approved this but not that it was real.
- keiferski 7y agoThe speculation on Deepfakes in politics reminds me of a particular period in Russian history known as the Time of Troubles, when numerous people claimed (called False Dmitris) to be the heir to the Russian throne. I believe a similar scenario happened a few times in the Ottoman Empire but I’m having difficulty finding it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry
- basseq 7y agoOK, forget the implications of low-cost and convincing fake video footage for nefarious purposes. "Fake videos"—e.g., CGI—have been around forever! I don't suddenly think Star Wars is real because I saw a video of it. At the end of the day, what cool tech for legitimate purposes! Hollywood VFX, training video or PR customization, etc. Nixon giving this speech is a cool look into "what-if", without the moral burden of someone trying to convince me that an alternate reality is the real one.
- cwkoss 7y agoThe point is that society currently takes video at face value (pardon the pun) A clever hacker could replace the face on security footage of someone committing a crime with yours, put that file back on to security cam dvr, removing metadata that indicates the file was ever modified. Let the police retrieve the footage from the dvr. Do you think a good lawyer could get you off the charges for committing that crime, if you didn't have an alibi? Evidence standards around video will need to change soon, and society isn't ready for this shift currently.
- Reason077 7y agoThis looks quite a bit more believable than the fake (dubbed) Nixon speeches in "For All Mankind". Deepfakes could have legitimate applications in film & television production.
- etxm 7y agoWelcome to the end of truth and fact.
- kragen 7y ago> "Deepfakes can be used for many of the things we already know," [co-director of the Nixon film Francesca] Panetta says, "but also to create kind of alternative histories or have the potential to kind of rewrite history as well." Movies, from Hollywood and elsewhere, have been convincing people of rewritten histories since their inception. How well known is the story of the real Spartacus compared to the Hollywood Spartacus? How many people's vision of the antebellum US South came from Gone With The Wind rather than from historical documents and interviews with former slaves and slave-owners? Birth of a Nation inspired the revival of a terrorist organization that lasted decades; Triumph of the Will painted the Nazis' rise as a matter of noble heroism triumphing over cowardice. Last week I argued with some epistemologically incompetent person who wanted me to watch an anti-vaccine movie about Gardasil, apparently unaware that YouTube videos are not really a publication venue used by medical researchers. So, what should we do about it? Well, the Soviets had an answer: since movies were so powerful, people would be carefully vetted before they got access to the equipment needed to make them, and if someone made a movie with harmful contents anyway, they would go to GULAG. Is that the solution we want?
- schainks 7y agoSounds like a good time to create a honeypot deepfakes service. Could charge a handsome fee for it, too, then authenticate deepfakes funded by political parties.
- eskaytwo 7y agoSomewhat fitting that they did it for the mother of all deepfake rumours - the Kubrick “never landed on the moon” conspiracy theory.