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Made by a dude who has next to no experience in the field. Now imagine what a guy who knows what he's doing can do with a bit more money. That's what the allusi

Made by a dude who has next to no experience in the field. Now imagine what a guy who knows what he's doing can do with a bit more money. That's what the allusion here is; the fact that a Reporter with 500$ even comes close should be an alarm signal to you.

viggity 7y ago
You're exactly right. Look at the work of someone who does a lot of these and it's pretty damn impressive. I like Ctrl+Alt+Face on YouTube. ex - Bill Hader/Tom Cruise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrhRBb-1Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrhRBb-1Ig I think one thing that could have helped the reporter is if they had reencoded the original Zuckerberg footage into something with a lower bitrate. The fine details/imperfections on his forehead contrasted with the lower fidelity of data's face provides a little too much contrast. It doesn't help that most of the source data for Data's face is lower quality, plus he has so much makeup pancaked on his face. I think if those factors were accounted for, the reporter's results would have been much more convincing even though he's a deepfake neophyte.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Oh man; I’ve watched a bunch of Ctrl+Alt+Face videos, but I’d never seen that Tom Cruise one. Thanks — hilarious. Also, I love how they fade in Seth Rogan for, like, two seconds — especially considering the effort required to put together the training data, run the app, etc.
gnulinux 7y ago
I'm under the impression that these things are easier to come infinitesimally close to, but very hard to get right: i.e. the old uncanny valley problem. A reporter with $500 can get very close, but a team of PhD with thousands of dollars and a lot of time may never be able to produce something that'll convince the public. I'm NOT claiming that this is the case, I'm just saying we don't have a reason to believe why this can't be the case.
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'd really hesitate to bet on never in this case--even if never were scoped to mean not within 20 years. There really are two separate questions though: - Can experts with a big budget create videos that even equally expert analysis can't tell from the real thing? (Maybe yes, maybe no. But it's hard. - With modest skill and budget, are people increasingly able to create fake videos that stand up a cursory glance and can fool people as a result? (Absolutely--or at least we're getting close.)
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    My point is, there is no close or far in this business. It's binary, either it looks real, or it doesn't. If your intention is to make deepfake to put it in a movie, video game or any other entertainment system, then sure you're right. But that already exists, DeepFake isn't a fundamental development for that. What is the "big thing" about deepfake is that we can imitate speeches of people in leadership positions. For this, we can get really really close; but it's unclear if it'll ever be realistic enough to be a problem in court cases, politics etc...
yboris 7y ago
This is also an impressive DeepFake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw Voice actor reads a poem in voices of famous people; his face gets swapped with the actor's face; the combination of voice and face makes it very believable.
- trianglem 7y ago
  This one is fantastic. It seems like just the most characteristic traits are carried over and the result is seem less.
cyorir 7y ago
Yes. The cost alone could have been significantly reduced. As the article notes, using an owned GPU locally instead of renting one for a cloud instance would have reduced the cost. The author also overspent on virtual CPU resources - paying for unused RAM and CPU cores when most of the processing was done on GPUs. And once you have a good model trained, actually putting it to use in inference is much faster and cheaper.

viggity 7y ago

You're exactly right. Look at the work of someone who does a lot of these and it's pretty damn impressive. I like Ctrl+Alt+Face on YouTube. ex - Bill Hader/Tom Cruise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrhRBb-1Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWrhRBb-1Ig I think one thing that could have helped the reporter is if they had reencoded the original Zuckerberg footage into something with a lower bitrate. The fine details/imperfections on his forehead contrasted with the lower fidelity of data's face provides a little too much contrast. It doesn't help that most of the source data for Data's face is lower quality, plus he has so much makeup pancaked on his face. I think if those factors were accounted for, the reporter's results would have been much more convincing even though he's a deepfake neophyte.

gdubs 7y ago
Oh man; I’ve watched a bunch of Ctrl+Alt+Face videos, but I’d never seen that Tom Cruise one. Thanks — hilarious. Also, I love how they fade in Seth Rogan for, like, two seconds — especially considering the effort required to put together the training data, run the app, etc.

gnulinux 7y ago

I'm under the impression that these things are easier to come infinitesimally close to, but very hard to get right: i.e. the old uncanny valley problem. A reporter with $500 can get very close, but a team of PhD with thousands of dollars and a lot of time may never be able to produce something that'll convince the public. I'm NOT claiming that this is the case, I'm just saying we don't have a reason to believe why this can't be the case.

ghaff 7y ago
I'd really hesitate to bet on never in this case--even if never were scoped to mean not within 20 years. There really are two separate questions though: - Can experts with a big budget create videos that even equally expert analysis can't tell from the real thing? (Maybe yes, maybe no. But it's hard. - With modest skill and budget, are people increasingly able to create fake videos that stand up a cursory glance and can fool people as a result? (Absolutely--or at least we're getting close.)
- gnulinux 7y ago
  My point is, there is no close or far in this business. It's binary, either it looks real, or it doesn't. If your intention is to make deepfake to put it in a movie, video game or any other entertainment system, then sure you're right. But that already exists, DeepFake isn't a fundamental development for that. What is the "big thing" about deepfake is that we can imitate speeches of people in leadership positions. For this, we can get really really close; but it's unclear if it'll ever be realistic enough to be a problem in court cases, politics etc...

yboris 7y ago

This is also an impressive DeepFake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm3squcz7Aw Voice actor reads a poem in voices of famous people; his face gets swapped with the actor's face; the combination of voice and face makes it very believable.

trianglem 7y ago
This one is fantastic. It seems like just the most characteristic traits are carried over and the result is seem less.

cyorir 7y ago

Yes. The cost alone could have been significantly reduced. As the article notes, using an owned GPU locally instead of renting one for a cloud instance would have reduced the cost. The author also overspent on virtual CPU resources - paying for unused RAM and CPU cores when most of the processing was done on GPUs. And once you have a good model trained, actually putting it to use in inference is much faster and cheaper.