5 ms·

I think the biggest casualty of deepfakes are going to be citizens. Record a video of police brutality or crime footage and it can all be shrugged off as a deep

by b0rsuk 6y ago

I think the biggest casualty of deepfakes are going to be citizens. Record a video of police brutality or crime footage and it can all be shrugged off as a deep fake. TV stations and journalists can afford 'signed videos'.

three_seagrass 6y ago
The type of person who will claim that has already been claiming 'false flag' or 'fake news' anyways. If someone has confirmation bias, they're still going to find ways to call it fake with or without deep fake tech.
- seppin 6y ago
  Exactly, we've had a wave of "fake news" hysteria surrounding mostly accurate and true reporting. People don't need deep fake videos to believe lies, they do it with little to no supporting evidence anyways.
epistasis 6y ago
It will be much more difficult to do deepfakes of that sort. Doing a good deepfake requires lots of training data. We might be able to get away with less training data a the tech progresses, but that is one area that will probably be most difficult to make progress in.
Forbo 6y ago
Seems like it would be pretty easy to add a way to sign a video using keys stored in a phone's enclave, surely Apple and Google are capable of doing so.
njharman 6y ago
Deep fakes typically are putting a face onto an actor (or other footage). Not faking an entire scene with multiple people, that's just called CGI/Animation. So you could easily take existing footage and change who it appears to be. But, 1) doing that to frame or unframe someone will be pretty niche 2) the original correct footage might still be findable 3) with access to the video files(which is going to be required in any legal situation), I'm sure there will be (exists for photos) algorytms that detect the editing the deepfake did to video file.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  Deepfaking doesn’t have to be used on its own. A dedicated entity can shoot entirely new original scenes (unique footage), deepfake actors’ faces to look like the people they’re targeting, edit it all together, and possibly add CG VFX as a final layer to make the resulting video look very real[0]. Of course, knowing all that is not really necessary for someone to shrug off truthful incriminating footage as “fake news”. [0] One caveat is that deepfaking works better with higher quality footage. To produce a complicated scene with altered actor faces while maintaining realistic “phone video” look, it would make sense to film with good lighting and high-quality gear into log or raw format, and then imitate the look in post-production after deepfaking is applied. Thus, one method of detecting such fakes could be by checking for traces of VFX, artificial noise, signature lens properties, signature behavior of phone video recording “magic” (such as noise reduction and stabilization), etc. Enough of producer’s dedication could make that tricky, but IMO it could be easier than applying automated deepfake detection straight up—it’d be buried early enough in post-production workflow, with a lot of noise introduced by subsequent “phone look” VFX.
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Deepfaking doesn’t have to be used on its own. A dedicated entity can shoot entirely new original scenes (unique footage), deepfake actors’ faces to look like the people they’re targeting, edit it all together, and possibly add CG VFX as a final layer to make the resulting video look very real This was treated (along with the ubiquity of CCTV in London) by the 2019 BBC show The Capture[0]. They glossed over a bunch of technical issues, but got the idea across pretty well. Of course, they made the Americans look like the worse bad guys (no one comes out looking good, even the nominal "victim.") but that's to be expected, given the darkness the show attempts to purvey. It's not great, but it absolutely provides context for the eventual advent of reasonable quality deep-fakes and the potential for abuse of the technology. I'd expect that we'll see lots more of this sort of story telling, especially since any sort of video production (not including raw video footage) is never seen the way things actually are. As such, the "faking" (minus the deep-fakes with faces, etc.) is the key to the exercise. Go watch the taping/filming of any television or movie and that will become immediately clear. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series) Edit: Added the missing link.
serial_dev 6y ago
I also don't think that politicians will suffer the most. Some people already know that social websites are full of fake videos, pictures and quotes from politicians. The others who don't know that already, could be more economically tricked, for example use a picture of a politician, place some outrageous quote next to him/her with Comic Sans, and some will believe that, too.
bonoboTP 6y ago
People weren't walking around with cameras all the time 10-15 years ago and the world functioned still.
racl101 6y ago
True. I've already noticed people who aren't cynical, become cynical after seeing some deepfake videos. This, coupled with confirmation bias will not help real victims who are regular citizens.
heavyset_go 6y ago
Maybe in the court of public opinion, but I doubt it would matter much in actual court. Chain of custody for video evidence has always mattered there.
koheripbal 6y ago
This is thinking too small. While the West has a lot of focus on its leaders and the population is fairly tech savvy - in the developing world can have a deep fake start a revolution before calmer heads can disseminate the truth. I could easily see a deep fake viral video go around in a sub-Saharan country, with a leader claiming he is gay or something else socially unforgivable in that country, and starting an internal ethnic conflict that cannot be undone.

by b0rsuk 6y ago

three_seagrass 6y ago

The type of person who will claim that has already been claiming 'false flag' or 'fake news' anyways. If someone has confirmation bias, they're still going to find ways to call it fake with or without deep fake tech.

seppin 6y ago
Exactly, we've had a wave of "fake news" hysteria surrounding mostly accurate and true reporting. People don't need deep fake videos to believe lies, they do it with little to no supporting evidence anyways.

epistasis 6y ago

It will be much more difficult to do deepfakes of that sort. Doing a good deepfake requires lots of training data. We might be able to get away with less training data a the tech progresses, but that is one area that will probably be most difficult to make progress in.

Forbo 6y ago

Seems like it would be pretty easy to add a way to sign a video using keys stored in a phone's enclave, surely Apple and Google are capable of doing so.

njharman 6y ago

Deep fakes typically are putting a face onto an actor (or other footage). Not faking an entire scene with multiple people, that's just called CGI/Animation. So you could easily take existing footage and change who it appears to be. But, 1) doing that to frame or unframe someone will be pretty niche 2) the original correct footage might still be findable 3) with access to the video files(which is going to be required in any legal situation), I'm sure there will be (exists for photos) algorytms that detect the editing the deepfake did to video file.

strogonoff 6y ago
Deepfaking doesn’t have to be used on its own. A dedicated entity can shoot entirely new original scenes (unique footage), deepfake actors’ faces to look like the people they’re targeting, edit it all together, and possibly add CG VFX as a final layer to make the resulting video look very real[0]. Of course, knowing all that is not really necessary for someone to shrug off truthful incriminating footage as “fake news”. [0] One caveat is that deepfaking works better with higher quality footage. To produce a complicated scene with altered actor faces while maintaining realistic “phone video” look, it would make sense to film with good lighting and high-quality gear into log or raw format, and then imitate the look in post-production after deepfaking is applied. Thus, one method of detecting such fakes could be by checking for traces of VFX, artificial noise, signature lens properties, signature behavior of phone video recording “magic” (such as noise reduction and stabilization), etc. Enough of producer’s dedication could make that tricky, but IMO it could be easier than applying automated deepfake detection straight up—it’d be buried early enough in post-production workflow, with a lot of noise introduced by subsequent “phone look” VFX.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >Deepfaking doesn’t have to be used on its own. A dedicated entity can shoot entirely new original scenes (unique footage), deepfake actors’ faces to look like the people they’re targeting, edit it all together, and possibly add CG VFX as a final layer to make the resulting video look very real This was treated (along with the ubiquity of CCTV in London) by the 2019 BBC show The Capture[0]. They glossed over a bunch of technical issues, but got the idea across pretty well. Of course, they made the Americans look like the worse bad guys (no one comes out looking good, even the nominal "victim.") but that's to be expected, given the darkness the show attempts to purvey. It's not great, but it absolutely provides context for the eventual advent of reasonable quality deep-fakes and the potential for abuse of the technology. I'd expect that we'll see lots more of this sort of story telling, especially since any sort of video production (not including raw video footage) is never seen the way things actually are. As such, the "faking" (minus the deep-fakes with faces, etc.) is the key to the exercise. Go watch the taping/filming of any television or movie and that will become immediately clear. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series) Edit: Added the missing link.

serial_dev 6y ago

I also don't think that politicians will suffer the most. Some people already know that social websites are full of fake videos, pictures and quotes from politicians. The others who don't know that already, could be more economically tricked, for example use a picture of a politician, place some outrageous quote next to him/her with Comic Sans, and some will believe that, too.

bonoboTP 6y ago

People weren't walking around with cameras all the time 10-15 years ago and the world functioned still.

racl101 6y ago

True. I've already noticed people who aren't cynical, become cynical after seeing some deepfake videos. This, coupled with confirmation bias will not help real victims who are regular citizens.

heavyset_go 6y ago

Maybe in the court of public opinion, but I doubt it would matter much in actual court. Chain of custody for video evidence has always mattered there.

koheripbal 6y ago

This is thinking too small. While the West has a lot of focus on its leaders and the population is fairly tech savvy - in the developing world can have a deep fake start a revolution before calmer heads can disseminate the truth. I could easily see a deep fake viral video go around in a sub-Saharan country, with a leader claiming he is gay or something else socially unforgivable in that country, and starting an internal ethnic conflict that cannot be undone.