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Two recent studies on judging authentic vs. deepfake images
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoSo I guess these people don't remember Stalin and Lenin photoshopping in the 1930s. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-photo-manipulation-1922-1953/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-photo-manipulation-1... And then there's doubles: when you just find somebody who looks exactly like the real person, and get them to do some acting. A deepfaked video or photoshop can be debunked because we're all aware that the technology exists to fake it; all we have to do is show evidence that it's not true. And at the same time, there will always be people who simply want to believe something and so will refuse any evidence to the contrary. You don't need a Deepfake for someone to believe that Hillary Clinton is running a gang of pedophiles out the nonexistent basement of a pizza parlor in the DC suburbs.
- sillyquiet 5y agoAhhh these fears are really overblown. This is just an iteration of the same overreaction that has been occurring since the days of splicing audio tape together. If anything, I would argue malicious editing of REAL footage, which already occurs in media outlets today, is far more frightening than the possibility of having a deepfake video, though it might be another tool in that slimy toolbox.
- unsupp0rted 5y agoI take a similar approach, but from a different angle: the widespread awareness of deepfakes is useful because people will stop relying on video "evidence" as evidence. We already do this with photos. We don't necessarily worry so much about what's in the photo as who claims the photo is real and what the chain of custody was. The same will be true for video evidence, even if or especially if we start stamping videos with tamper-proof signatures.
- theshrike79 5y agoThis is the thing. Convincing enough deep fake + the 24/7 news industry + Twitter rage machine combined will at some point overreact way too fast and too hard and someone will get actually hurt, maybe even killed. Actors have had clauses for not using their likeness for a long time now, if their face is 3D scanned, the use cases are carefully limited. They can't just put Brad Pitt in a random commercial even though they have the scans of his face and body and can find a voice actor.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoNot sure why this would be downvoted.
- wutbrodo 5y agoHN has by far the most bizarre downvote patterns I've ever seen. Not really worth wondering about.
- rgrieselhuber 5y agoI think there are definite categories. They seem to range from legitimate uses of downvoting such as against obvious trolls, facetious argumentation, etc. to enforcement of ideological tyranny. It's always interesting to analyze.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago> enforcement of ideological tyranny Boy, that escalated quickly.
- wutbrodo 5y agoWell sure, describing downvote patterns as weird doesn't mean that the majority of downvotes are bizarre. The bulk are completely comprehensible. But I can't think of anywhere else where I see as many completely reasonable comments heavily downvoted for incomprehensible reasons.
- space_ghost 5y agoThere's a subplot in The Newsroom where a producer edits an interviewee out of context, leading to the network broadcasting false accusations of serious war crimes. The producer wasn't careful enough, and a clock visible in the background is seen to jump around. Without that clock it would have been undetectable.
- Schiendelman 5y agoLife imitates art - when Russia started attacking Ukraine, RT reported a 5pm emergency meeting of their military leaders. Included was a photo showing two of their watches at 11:45. (The report was at about 7pm the same day, so it couldn’t have just been a long meeting)
- dugmartin 5y agoAnd parodied by the Simpsons here: https://youtu.be/qEGFaOeUm2A https://youtu.be/qEGFaOeUm2A
- vlovich123 5y agoThat episode is from November 27, 1994. That Newsroom episode aired July 28, 2013. Less Simpsons parodying Newsroom and more them predicting the future [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_to_the_Future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_to_the_Future
- lupire 5y agoSimpsons Already Did It https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_Already_Did_It https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_Already_Did_It
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jiro 5y agoMichael Moore did this in Bowling for Columbine.
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- slothtrop 5y agoEven malicious editing has been around a long time, but the ease and accessibility, coupled with social media proliferation, is on another level. I'm not sure to what extent this matters yet when mere text on a screen can fool certain demographics. Is doctored footage/images a moot point if the target viewers are going to believe it anyway? What we need is better inoculation to psycho misinformation politics
- andrewgioia 5y agoRelated: Lucasfilm hired a digital artist, Shamook, who re-did Luke's scene in The Mandalorian with some improved deepfake techniques[1]. Here's his video comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrHXA2cSpNU [1] https://www.engadget.com/lucasfilm-hires-shamook-054904077.html https://www.engadget.com/lucasfilm-hires-shamook-054904077.h...
- victor9000 5y agoThe biggest problem for me is that the mouth movements seem completely off.
- jagged-chisel 5y agoHis top lip doesn't move when he speaks
- SECProto 5y agoIt's off on both sides, but to me it looks more off on the deepfake side
- stavros 5y agoI think that's because they used the original fake to make the deepfake. If they had used an actual actor (with a completely different face but accurate mouth movement) I think it would have been spot on.
- adamsmith143 5y agoThat's been an issue for all CGI, I guess our ability to spot even the slightest imperfection in how mouths look has us well stuck in the uncanny valley
- mywacaday 5y agoThe firs comment on the video says it would be better if they had access to the original video and not just the original fake.
- adenozine 5y agoOnce this is more accessible for smaller studios, with smaller budgets, then actors will be obsolete. 10y from now, we will be able to simulate any human action or sound or gesture on screen with commodity hardware. I can have a 75m USD cast for my film, for the price of a couple GPUs spun for a few days. Crazy.
- goto11 5y agoFully animated actors can play just as effective and convincing as flesh-and-blood actors, as shown by Disney or Pixar. But is also requires immense amounts ow works and talent - neither which is cheap. Star Wars certainly didn't use deepfakes because they though it was cheaper or easier.
- wutbrodo 5y agoI agree that it won't obsolete actors as GP says, but it will absolutely be cheaper and easier. The expense of acting doesn't come from the craft being expensive or rare. It comes from the market power that results when the strongest connection we feel to a performance is inseparable from the performer (ie their face). There's a reason that editors and cinematographers don't have fans outside of film nerds,and it's not that because their craft is trivial or that they don't contribute to the film. Technology costs can be reduced, but market power is what allows them to collect tens (or hundreds!) of millions of dollars. Commoditization via deepfakes turns them into just another employee. You can look at voice acting as an example. Before Robin Williams' performance in Aladdin started the trend of recognizable celebrities as voice actors, there was a thriving community of voice-only actors in big-budget movies, hired for their craft instead of their brand. And yet, you probably can't name a single one, despite being able to name plenty of actors from non-animated films of the era. They were also inherently replaceable, as memorably parodied by the simpsons: https://youtu.be/g5ffaTv4ajg https://youtu.be/g5ffaTv4ajg It's notable that the studios switched to celebrity actors precisely for the brand that they brought from their non-voice roles. Deepfakes are pretty much identical to this animated case, allowing it to be extended to physical movies. The recognizable portion of a performance becomes a few model files instead of an actor's face, and the job of a (replaceable) human actor is to play the role of the performer, not just the character.
- kevincox 5y agoMaybe we will finally see the importance of photographically important messages such as government announcements.
- sosuke 5y agoI've never been worried about this because I just assume that official outlets and websites will use some kind of verifiable encryption keys. Makes official official and everything else suspect. Is this too simplistic an outlook? Are there different options? I'm not sure but I know that third party unverified content is always suspect. First party content less suspect. Verified content is ... verified. Still could be deepfake but then the risk is on a loss of trust.
- vannevar 5y agoIt's worth noting that society existed for thousands of years without photography, audio recording, or videography. As you allude to, society is held together via trust networks, and these are independent of the prevailing media.
- syshum 5y agoSpeed of information is problem today we did not have in the past. Wrong, or disinformation can spread faster than the truth can be exposed in alot of cases. Especially when you have companies silencing people that criticize approved sources, and are determining what "truth" is allowed in public discourse
- vannevar 5y agoYes, but this works both ways---the truth also spreads faster over faster networks. It's always been true that rumor (or disinformation) spreads faster than truth. It always will be true, because rumor is easier to generate than truth.
- zehaeva 5y agoI love living in an age where old scifi movies/plots that most people thought would never actually happen, actually start to happen. I'm thinking specifically of 2002's S1M0NE[0]. I can't wait for this future. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film)
- echelon_musk 5y agoYou may also enjoy The Congress. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/
- kingcharles 5y agoWhat a trippy trailer. Must watch.
- sdoering 5y agoOne one hand - I would say that everything that can be abused will be abused. On the other hand I would say, people (after a time of adaption) will learn to not trust any moving image anymore. Or any still image for that. But on the other hand - we are already theoretically and practically able to generate very convincing fake images, if we would want to. We could generate fake stills from a surveillance video (or a smartphone video) of a fake politician doing cocaine. Or interacting in a compromising way with a prostitute. Why do we not see much more of things like that? Probably because it just might be more difficult to create a believable story around such a fake that does not break down when looking at the story more than 10 seconds. So maybe the problem will not be as big? I don't know. I have no idea how easy it will become to create truly believable fakes. Not sure how people will adapt and if trust in anything might break down in the process. But what I do not believe is that tech industry creating rules for itself will be a deterrent against abuse of any technology.
- robbedpeter 5y agoHow many people are convicted on 480p or less janky security footage? Making believable bad fakes is trivial when high resolution fakes are only moderately difficult. If it hasn't happened yet, it will soon - people will be submitting modified doorbell camera and home security footage to police. Or someone's compromised home network will record a deep fake overlay of otherwise legitimate footage, and the owner won't be complicit. In a situation with, say, a $5,000 or more item, or a schedule 1 or 2 substance stolen, a person could be subjected to damning evidence of them committing a serious felony, for potentially less difficulty and risk than swatting.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoThey’ve been trying to scare us with deepfakes for so long now. It’s such a yawn. They create such a narrow image type (face on blurry background) and say “look how real they look!” Same with deepfake videos, which could always be faked with good FX and one of the reasons why videos with no chain of custody don’t become evidence in court already!
- vincentriemer 5y agoThe community of people making deepfakes even approaching this quality is astonishingly small (think 3-4 people), requires absurd hardware (either A100s or A6000s), and the Luke one is even more of a outlier as this deepfaker has the support of ILM, one of the best VFX studios in the industry. All this is to say I'm not especially scared — especially when these "best of the best" deepfakes still have obvious tells.
- pradn 5y agoIf Disney can't make Luke Skywalker, one of their most iconic characters, look good in a show with a budget the size of the Mandalorian, I can't say I'm too worried for this technology yet. Everyday misinformation techniques are far more pernicious - out-of-context sound bites, selective coverage, framing in an uncharitable way, interviewing non-experts, etc etc.
- Uehreka 5y agoI see you haven’t watched The Book of Boba Fett. I can assure you the deepfake technology is now… fully operational. Everyday misinformation techniques were already really bad, but things could stand to get a lot worse.
- dhc02 5y agoYeah the improvement in young Luke in The Book of Boba Fett was pretty impressive.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoAgreed! That was the first one I've seen where I felt it was basically "passing". Like if I didn't know, I wouldn't know.
- dabbledash 5y agoYeah, it doesn’t seem like people believe misinformation because the evidence for it is just so convincing. I see people link to sources (if they even bother doing that), with completely false descriptions of what it shows. It doesn’t matter; as long as the description is the kind of thing that outrages people they’ll amplify it. Corrections will get one tenth of the attention.
- ceroxylon 5y agoI was watching a livestream recently, and the person turned to grab something out of frame, and for a split second when their face was near the border, the filter glitched out and gave flashes of the person's real face. I was truly shocked as I had been watching for about five minutes with zero inclination that the person was essentially wearing a digital mask.
- Uehreka 5y agoMy partner was showing me a Doja Cat TikTok last night where she was singing an old song with an “old age” face filter on, and the effect was stunning. Super realistic wrinkles, contours and skin texture, it never glitched out and had no visible edges. We are truly through the looking glass.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thomasahle 5y ago> overall average accuracy was near chance at 48 percent, although individuals’ accuracy varied considerably, from a low of around 25 percent to a high of around 80 percent. People with a 25% score are basically as good as recognizing fakes as people with an 80% score. The former group just prefer the fakes to the real..
- monadmoproblems 5y agoI don't know how I'd feel if I was the guy who 96% of people thought wasn't real.
- bell-cot 5y agoIf Hollywood's use of deepfake Luke Skywalkers gives "more truth-oriented" folks a good-enough awareness of the technology, and fact-free stuff like the Pizzagate conspiracy is good enough for the "less truth-oriented" folks...then deepfakes aren't much of a threat.
- Joeri 5y agoThere are huge opportunities here for hashing and watermarking that guarantees videos are unaltered from the original recording taken by a physical device. An iphone already has all the hardware it needs to ensure it cannot be fooled by a flat image and to calculate and insert a cryptographic hash while recording. We will lose the battle against deepfakes, but we can create a subcategory of video proven as non-fake and win the war.
- doctorhandshake 5y agoAm I alone in having thought that the term ‘deepfake’ only applied to NN/deep learning-generated imagery, rather than just plain CG, as implied in this article?
- dandellion 5y agoThat's the context where it originated, but that distinction is probably lost to most people outside the ai/tech scene.
- sgfgross 5y agoIf anyone is interested in the paper (PDF): https://oa.mg/work/10.1073/pnas.2110013119 https://oa.mg/work/10.1073/pnas.2110013119
- stavros 5y agoI see many people here worried about the disinformation potential of deepfakes. I think that that worry fundamentally ignores the fact that we'll just stop considering videos evidence. A century ago, you could trust photos. Then, Photoshop came out, and the world didn't end, we just learned that we can no longer trust photos. Now we just won't trust anything, and it'll be one party's word against the other's. Sure, this isn't as good as living in a world with objective proof, but I think we'll grow out of the short-term issues and find different ways of verifying truth.
- pessimizer 5y agoI'm not sure what failure to reliably discriminate between real pictures of people I don't know and therefore wouldn't be able to recognize and (what are basically composite) computer-generated people who don't exist is supposed to prove. Artists who can paint a picture of someone who doesn't exist that I can't tell from pictures of people who do exist, and I could probably piece together somebody who doesn't exist in photoshop from pieces of people who do. Also, a weird-ass set of conclusions here: > People are also excellent at incorporating context and background knowledge into their judgments in ways that computers mostly aren’t, and in ways that the sorts of tasks in these studies mostly don’t assess. One exception is a pair of deepfake videos of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un included in the video study. People were much better than the model at classifying these videos. Whereas a majority of participants correctly spotted these fakes, the model was way off, highly confident that they were real. > Here, people may have taken into account factors like their memories of previous statements made by these leaders, or knowledge of what their voices sound like, or the likelihood that they would say the sorts of things shown in the video: all things not included in the model at all. Couldn't it just be because they were bad imitations of people they recognized? Isn't the entire ominous point of "deepfakes" to deceive people by presenting them with people the recognize doing things they didn't do? Looks like people still don't have a problem recognizing those as false. The only good "deepfakes" I've seen are ones that have been extensively touched up manually, using the automatic part as raw material. New techniques have certainly made that a lot cheaper.
- tharne 5y agoThis may be an unpopular opinion, but I think deepfakes could be a very good thing for society. Imagine if we got to the point where it was completely impossible to distinguish fake images and videos from real ones. It would be a huge blow against surveillance capitalism and the surveillance state. If every video out there is suddenly a potential forgery, people will grow to become more skeptical of things they see unless they see those things in person in the meatspace. It's almost as if we're going to go back to the time before cameras and audio recordings. What makes things like deepfakes so scary right now is that people overwhelming trust images and videos by default. Once we shift from automatically trusting images and videos to automatically distrusting them, things like revenge porn and viral videos of people saying or doing embarrassing things will lose most of their power.