7 ms·

Part 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 l

Part 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 ago
That’s awfully optimistic. Even when seeing shouldn't be believing, people still will.
personjerry 7y ago
That'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 ago
  There 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 ago
More 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 ago
More 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"
- tigershark 7y ago
  What’s the difference with today “fake news” outrage for absolutely real news?
  - macintux 7y ago
    The difference is that now people will have video proof that their belief is true, and will know any counter-evidence is fake. Today some people can be persuaded by evidence to abandon a faulty belief. That number seems destined to dwindle in a world where evidence is increasingly malleable.
netwanderer3 7y ago
Make-A-Wish Foundation can really benefit from this technology by sending these "heartfelt" deepfake videos of famous celebrities and idols to dying kids, hoping to cheer them up. Is it an ethical thing to do? You be the judge!
- Ozumandias 7y ago
  In a thread full of awful futures, I find this one to be the most depressing.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  This is fantastically evil. I think you win the dangerous idea of the day award. It reminds me of the market for answering machine messages, but here you will have a large catalog of celebrities and you can create a personalized video message of them talking about you or someone you know. A con artist could also buy that to pretend they know a certain person. So the website would work like this: you pick a celebrity, you pick a theme/context/environment, like Skype call, handheld phone video, at home webcam, etc. and then you pick the message. You can have actors with similar build as the target celeb acting specific scenes, to make the scenes more unique but still reusable. Payment options differs based on the exclusivity of the acted scene.
  - cosmotron 7y ago
    What if that's what the startup Cameo is actually offering? https://www.cameo.com/ https://www.cameo.com/ :-)
- undersuit 7y ago
  Hallmark shares surge on the introduction of the Custom Celebrity Holiday Greetings Digital Card Series.
CamperBob2 7y ago
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. Not to drag the thread in a political direction, but that's what I thought when Trump won the Presidency. Rather than a boost to our cognitive immunity, though, we're only seeing stronger polarization. The transition will certainly suck though. Exactly, only there's no sign of an end to the 'transition.' Today, the common person is more empowered than ever before to ignore what they don't want to hear.
remind_me_again 7y ago
That transition will be very long, if ever be complete.
krapp 7y ago
>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. That's not what will happen. What will happen is that people will consider video which corroborates their biases to be legitimate, and video which contradicts their biases to be fraudulent. Bear in mind that skepticism is already on the rise - the web is rife with it, to the point that any news source whose reporting isn't sufficiently paranoid, cynical or piss-taking is dismissed out of hand as likely propaganda, yet this widespread mistrust in just about everything hasn't resulted in a rise in critical thinking or due diligence, rather the opposite, because it's easy for people to live in self-perpetuating alternate universes with multiple positive feedback loops provided through the web reinforcing their filter bubbles. >Value should also shift back to more legitimate sources. It might, if anyone believed that legitimate sources existed anymore outside of 4chan, Reddit and Comedy Central. Unfortunately it seems as if we as a society have decided to abandon the premise that objective truth exists, as the world around us is fed to us more and more as abstractions by untrustworthy arbiters. Deepfakes aren't going to help solve the problem of who can be trusted to "legitimize" truth in a "post-truth" world.
undersuit 7y ago
You're spot on. It's going to be hard and difficult. The complete breakdown in privacy described in 'The Light of Other Worlds' really changed my worldview. I am and will remain to be a proponent of personal privacy, but the world isn't going to respect that. We need to seriously start considering taking back some of our power. Example: UK CCTV footage, that should be public domain. The knowledge of those that access the footage, public domain too. Then include public education about the dangers of performing activities in the public. That someone might use the footage to steal your credit card shouldn't be a reason to hide this data. That someone could stalk another individual through the network isn't an excuse to hand over the data to the government.

egdod 7y ago

That’s awfully optimistic. Even when seeing shouldn't be believing, people still will.

personjerry 7y ago

That'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 ago
There 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 ago

More 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 ago

More 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"

tigershark 7y ago
What’s the difference with today “fake news” outrage for absolutely real news?
- macintux 7y ago
  The difference is that now people will have video proof that their belief is true, and will know any counter-evidence is fake. Today some people can be persuaded by evidence to abandon a faulty belief. That number seems destined to dwindle in a world where evidence is increasingly malleable.

netwanderer3 7y ago

Make-A-Wish Foundation can really benefit from this technology by sending these "heartfelt" deepfake videos of famous celebrities and idols to dying kids, hoping to cheer them up. Is it an ethical thing to do? You be the judge!

Ozumandias 7y ago
In a thread full of awful futures, I find this one to be the most depressing.
jobigoud 7y ago
This is fantastically evil. I think you win the dangerous idea of the day award. It reminds me of the market for answering machine messages, but here you will have a large catalog of celebrities and you can create a personalized video message of them talking about you or someone you know. A con artist could also buy that to pretend they know a certain person. So the website would work like this: you pick a celebrity, you pick a theme/context/environment, like Skype call, handheld phone video, at home webcam, etc. and then you pick the message. You can have actors with similar build as the target celeb acting specific scenes, to make the scenes more unique but still reusable. Payment options differs based on the exclusivity of the acted scene.
- cosmotron 7y ago
  What if that's what the startup Cameo is actually offering? https://www.cameo.com/ https://www.cameo.com/ :-)
undersuit 7y ago
Hallmark shares surge on the introduction of the Custom Celebrity Holiday Greetings Digital Card Series.

CamperBob2 7y ago

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. Not to drag the thread in a political direction, but that's what I thought when Trump won the Presidency. Rather than a boost to our cognitive immunity, though, we're only seeing stronger polarization. The transition will certainly suck though. Exactly, only there's no sign of an end to the 'transition.' Today, the common person is more empowered than ever before to ignore what they don't want to hear.

remind_me_again 7y ago

That transition will be very long, if ever be complete.

krapp 7y ago

>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. That's not what will happen. What will happen is that people will consider video which corroborates their biases to be legitimate, and video which contradicts their biases to be fraudulent. Bear in mind that skepticism is already on the rise - the web is rife with it, to the point that any news source whose reporting isn't sufficiently paranoid, cynical or piss-taking is dismissed out of hand as likely propaganda, yet this widespread mistrust in just about everything hasn't resulted in a rise in critical thinking or due diligence, rather the opposite, because it's easy for people to live in self-perpetuating alternate universes with multiple positive feedback loops provided through the web reinforcing their filter bubbles. >Value should also shift back to more legitimate sources. It might, if anyone believed that legitimate sources existed anymore outside of 4chan, Reddit and Comedy Central. Unfortunately it seems as if we as a society have decided to abandon the premise that objective truth exists, as the world around us is fed to us more and more as abstractions by untrustworthy arbiters. Deepfakes aren't going to help solve the problem of who can be trusted to "legitimize" truth in a "post-truth" world.

undersuit 7y ago

You're spot on. It's going to be hard and difficult. The complete breakdown in privacy described in 'The Light of Other Worlds' really changed my worldview. I am and will remain to be a proponent of personal privacy, but the world isn't going to respect that. We need to seriously start considering taking back some of our power. Example: UK CCTV footage, that should be public domain. The knowledge of those that access the footage, public domain too. Then include public education about the dangers of performing activities in the public. That someone might use the footage to steal your credit card shouldn't be a reason to hide this data. That someone could stalk another individual through the network isn't an excuse to hand over the data to the government.