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A Nixon deepfake, a 'moon disaster' speech and an information ecosystem at risk
- leahey 6y agoThis is absolutely remarkable.
- Skunkleton 6y agoIt _felt_ real. Disturbing.
- d2v 6y agoDefinitely felt a little off, but if I didn't know that this was a deepfake, I would probably accept it as real. As usual, I don't know if that fits more in to the "remarkable" or "disturbing" category.
- Izkata 6y agoEh, I'm not entirely sure I would have. The effect is near identical to when you have one person behind another, pretending to be the front person's arms and hands - the motions just don't match up right. Maybe people who use faces more than full body language are more affected by this particular one?
- d2v 6y agoI kind of agree, but it's hard to separate knowing that it's fake from my reaction to it. If this were presented without that context, I might feel like it's off, but not necessarily question it, especially if it came from a source I believed to be legitimate.
- m-watson 6y agoI also think, on top of all your points (which I agree with), keeping it shorter would make it more convincing. I think with the current usage of social media, short clips created through some synthetic means will be harder and harder to identify.
- jariel 6y agoWhat made it 'real' was the actual speech itself. It would have been hard to 'fake' that. The 3 minutes of 'intro blast off' (that could have been 10 seconds) and the Flash-like landing page are really problematic.
- ggggtez 6y agoAn AI can't fake a speech about a subject they never spoke about... yet. Though, to be honest, I think it wouldn't be hard. 1) Collect a corpus of speeches. 2) Use style-synthesis techniques, just like in the art-style synthesis demos. 3) Input a speech about a spaceship disaster and run it in the "style" of Nixon.
- gus_massa 6y agoI remember reading that 1 minute of an important speech of a politician requires about an hour of preparation by a professional speech writer. And I guess that a failure speech is even more difficult to write. The current level of AI like GPT-3 can generate fluffy text, very good fluffy text, but still can't generate a text for this kind of speech.
- nullc 6y ago> but still can't generate a text for this kind of speech. I disagree. Maybe the output I gave above wouldn't quite pass for the output of one of the greatest speech writers of the time, but most speeches are rubbish and I think what you can get out of GPT3 well operated is not at all rubbish.
- jariel 6y agoYes, but I wonder if that would have been specific enough.
- nullc 6y ago> An AI can't fake a speech Nonsense. "It is with a heavy heart that we must inform you that Apollo 11 has failed to return from the moon. We have lost contact with our crew, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. When they left earth seven hours ago their fate was unknown but now it is certain. They died as men should, ready to die for what they believed. This loss is a tremendous loss for our nation, for their families, and for mankind but their sacrifice was not made in vain: It is a testimony to courage, determination, and human achievement that will be remembered by all who witnessed it today and for all those who come for all time so long as man walks this world or any other. For this tragedy will not mark the end of space exploration; it will strengthen our resolve to continue advancing space technology and human knowledge. We have enjoyed the fruits of their labor and shared the pride of their achievement just as we now share their isolation and grief. We will honor their memory by continuing that work and by taking that faith and that dream into a future they will not live to see but helped to build. We will remember them and we will remember what they stood for: The greatness of man and the hope for a better tomorrow." This isn't a first shot output, I had it retry a bit and guided it a little, mostly to get it to write a longer speech instead of a short quote. I think it's much better than I could have written on my own in a minute or two.
- kristopolous 6y agoI was expecting the Walter Cronkite part to be the fake thing here in a clever twist. They'd pass through the Nixon questions and then say "Alright, but what about Walter Cronkite?" My true advocacy would be to use another contemporary big three anchor from the era as the deep fake, then show the real Cronkite footage during the quiz at the end That's the real lesson IMHO, not if you can tell when you're prompted to listen for it, but when you aren't.
- ggggtez 6y agoI was kind of expecting that this was going to demo some step forward, but this has all the same tells has the last several high profile deepfake demos. > Voice is clipped > Chin > head bobbing
- frabbit 6y agoKnowing the speech was a fake and paying attention to it "skeptically" I noticed the double head-bob as an odd thing which seemed suspiciously convenient as a transition between cut-n-pastes. Now I'm going to have to go and watch archival Nixon footage to see if the same thing is there or not :)
- peteretep 6y ago> head bobbing I wonder if you could use a GAN to do a post-production fix on them. Teach it what actual people's head movements look like, and then get it to stabilize the image as a second pass.
- ceejayoz 6y agoFor now, and you're looking for it. I remember when cellphone cameras first came out going "ffs, who'd want that? it's a tiny, low quality photo".
- akiselev 6y agoThis Youtube channel has lots of other great examples of whats possible with voice synthesis today: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q Some of my favorites include Sinatra singing ABBA's Dancing Queen [1], six presidents rapping the NWA classic [2], and Milton Friedman rapping 50's P.I.M.P. [3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_w4KGifug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_w4KGifug [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZVp-n-5TM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZVp-n-5TM [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUYMvuNIas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mUYMvuNIas
- adventured 6y agoI'm struggling to understand how they're great examples. They sound absolutely atrocious and nowhere near believable. They sound really, really bad, like something an amateur with zero editing experience could put together with cheap equipment. They're so bad they're difficult to listen to, especially the Sinatra one.
- akiselev 6y agoThis sounds like a GPT3 response :) Note I said "great examples of what's possible today" not "great examples of JFK recording NWA's Fuck the Police".
- adventured 6y ago> This sounds like a GPT3 response :) If you're going to try to insult someone, own it and leave off the smiley. Don't hide behind that weak passive aggressiveness.
- whatshisface 6y agoI think the team behind this comment thread accidentally substituted the GPT instance tuned for Reddit for the one tuned for HN.
- hyko 6y ago
- frabbit 6y ago3m06s to 3m15s seemed a bit cheesy and stagey
- hyko 6y agoIf deepfakes are so good, why do they always look and sound so crap?
- scoopertrooper 6y agoYou're getting down voted, but I agree. While the footage represents a technological marvel, it doesn't fill me with dread that there is some sort of deep fake genie waiting to jump out of the bottle. I think the choice of speech is also quite telling. They chose a target with low video and audio resolution and a lot of interference that could mask some of the imperfections of their algorithm. Despite all this, oddness induced by the deepfake process is still quite evident.
- SamuelAdams 6y agoThey don't need to be perfect. They just need to be convincing. Consider MP3 files. Any audiophile will tell you that a compressed MP3 file is a piss-poor representation of the true sound. The best experience is to listen to a band live, then vinyl, then FLAC. And yet the majority of people listen to MP3 files. They strike the right balance of file size and sound clarity for an overwhelming amount of systems, doubly so since online streaming took off. So now that people have become accustomed to the sound of MP3, they are not used to anything else. They are convinced that an MP3 file is the "true sound" of the song. Right now deepfakes is in its infancy. Personally I think it is improving at an alarming rate. If I shared the moon video on Facebook I am willing to bet most people would think it is real. They don't notice the clipped speech, the subtle double head nods. Their minds are not as critical of video as you and I are. So to them, they are convinced it is real. What happens when only machines can detect if something is authentic or a fake? What happens when not all site administrators scan for videos and fail to mark them as illegitimate? What happens when courts use deepfakes unknowingly as evidence to convict someone, or impeach a president, or fire a worker for sexual harassment? We have already seen what happens when "verified" twitter accounts are compromised - what if a CEO puts out a video announcing some controversial new endeavor, or admission to fraud? There are very real concerns about this technology and I believe it will very soon become a weapon that takes misinformation and turns it into very real consequences.
- mirimir 6y agoThis is a fake, sure. Maybe it's not perfect, but the software is improving. So within a few years, I'm guessing that fakes will be indistinguishable from true recordings. But this was based on the text of an actual speech written for President Nixen, to be delivered if the mission failed. So isn't it likely that he practiced it, just in case? And if he did, it might have been recorded, more or less accidentally. As Reagan's quip about nuking Russia was. And so as others note, it becomes crucial to look at the historical context.
- mastazi 6y ago> As Reagan's quip about nuking Russia was. Oh this is interesting, do you have any sources where I could read more about it?
- paulsutter 6y agoWhile testing an audio setup in 1984, Reagan joked that Russia had been outlawed and “we begin bombing in 5 minutes”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_minutes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_begin_bombing_in_five_min...
- paulie_a 6y agoIt happened
- echelon 6y agoMy website has 40+ celebrity and cartoon voices: https://vo.codes https://vo.codes I'm working on voice conversion (voice to voice for TeamSpeak/Discord) now.
- woodson 6y agoAny chance you would be willing to share the (finetuned) models? For science? I’m interested in detection and want to look at artifacts common to speech audio generated by different models all based on the same overall implementation.
- Nasrudith 6y agoIt is one thing to make apocalyptic predictions - they could be reasonable conclusions of possibilities, unreasonable, or anywhere in between. They can be discussed on their own merit. Heck even why they personally conclude something may be discussed and considered, and something to try to understand even if disagreed with or considered wrong. But the "here is how you should feel" leading bullshit is a clear run-arround for critical facilities that takes far too many people. Nothing makes me write a source off as a bad actor more than panic mongering that /tells you/ how to feel as opposed to leaving it to you to decide. It is not only a sure sign of a manipulator because of scared people being easier to manipulate. It may be unduly harsh, caustic, or sharp but I have absolutely lost patience for this tactic.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoI don't think that the prediction "deep fakes pose a risk to an information ecosystem" can be described as apocalyptic. I feel like I'm missing sonethis as this article seems like a fairly un-opininionated puff piece.
- westmeal 6y agoWith you 100% but unfortunately it works too well. All of the top grossing news outlets abuse the hell out of this technique. I don't believe it'll get any better and more now then ever people will need to learn to think about where their news is coming from.
- prox 6y agoI am reading 2000 year old Cicero, and it’s actually very insightful in the art of orating. As you say, an issue can be called upon its own merit. However critical thought is not a skill we have invested in, going by what is happening in the world, and the US in particular.
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe Onion's take on apocalyptic predictions: https://politics.theonion.com/conservatives-warn-radical-kamala-harris-will-impose-he-1844703306 https://politics.theonion.com/conservatives-warn-radical-kam...
- rmason 6y agoFor the majority of those on HN who didn't witness the live event this is a pretty good summary. It really took me back to that day as our entire family was glued to our black and white TV watching the man known to all as Uncle Walter. Watching President Nixon twitch a bit was the only tell that this wasn't real. Got me to imagining the video where Eisenhower confesses D-Day was a failure, the actual speech he wrote does exist.
- mellosouls 6y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896996
- m0zg 6y agoBullshit. Easily 80% of broadcast news today is fake, either overtly, or by omission. It only exists to advance a narrative, not to inform or support debate. As Denzel Washington quipped: "If you don't watch the news, you're uninformed. If you do watch the news, you're misinformed." The ability to produce fake news artificially as well won't tip the scales even slightly, because nobody with a brain trusts the "news" anyway.
- qwerty456127 6y agoDeepfake stuff is not a threat, it's a vaccine. There finally is a chance people will realize they can believe nothing and nobody, news lie and mislead and they absolutely have to triple-check everything before they take that in consideration.
- pjc50 6y agoThis destroys democracy. Because you can't check everything yourself, or even a tiny amount of things, so you have no meaningful basis on which to tick that box on the ballot.
- qwerty456127 6y agoYou never had it. It has always been an illusion. Now this just got harder to ignore.
- mytherin 6y agoIs it that much worse than the effect that photoshop had? We have been able to fake pictures/images for a long time now. What changed is that people no longer blindly trust pictures. I assume something similar will happen with video.
- Waterfall 6y agoWhat is the Democratic country you're from? Didn't know they existed outside a few small tribes.
- Bayart 6y agoIt works as a PoC, and it could fool me if I saw it at the edge of my vision, on my kitchen's TV. But otherwise it looks odd, and most importantly it sounds like the weirdest vocoder in existence. We still can't truly fake instruments, never mind the human voice.
- brownbat 6y agoPeople have been doing this since the cannonballs photo in the Crimean War. If you think a fully fabricated video is the key to lying to people I have a poker game you can join. Here's a discussion of how far you can distort video today, in a way that is way more subtle and harder to rebut than a total fabrication: https://youtu.be/tEGqepsFTbI https://youtu.be/tEGqepsFTbI
- systemBuilder 6y agoI really hate the fake static in this video - as a 7-yr old I watched the moon landing in 1969 and nobody's TV was that bad! If I had a TV that bad I would either repair it or throw it away!
- TheButlerian 6y agoHas something positive came out from the world of IT in the last 20 years?
- jolmg 6y ago> Beyond this illegal and harmful use of face swapping Is face-swapping illegal? What law is it breaking?
- 00N8 6y agoI remember watching a TV ad where Michael Jordan around the age he was when he retired played 1-on-1 against himself as a college player. This was 15-20 years ago & I wrote an essay for high school English class on how that ad shows we can't believe our eyes when it comes to what we see on TV. It was visually much more convincing than the examples I see here, so I can't help but think deepfakes haven't quite caught up with professional editing, at least not yet.