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> While some of the deepfake recordings used are convincing enough, others can be easily detected due to various sync mismatches, mainly spoofing the applicants

> While some of the deepfake recordings used are convincing enough, others can be easily detected due to various sync mismatches, mainly spoofing the applicants' voices. > "Complaints report the use of voice spoofing, or potentially voice deepfakes, during online interviews of the potential applicants," the US federal law enforcement agency added. Something about this doesn't smell right: 1) Don't video deepfakes require lots of high-quality input video (which is why they were often made of Obama)? Where would an attacker get this for some rando? 2) Why would voice deep-fakes even be necessary, given the interviewee is very unlikely to be known by the interviewer? I suppose it could be used to fake accents, but I don't think that would be an issue for a "remote tech job" -- just steal an identity that could plausibly have your accent.

mirker 4y ago
Regarding 1) and following 2) you only need to make realistic-enough video that it passes as a person and is similar enough to the target person. For example, you can have a pretrained model (e.g., using zero targeted data) and search for some configuration that is closest to the target person. You only need to match a few variables (e.g., ethnicity, gender, hair color, age) before the fake is plausible.
jstarfish 4y ago
> Why would voice deep-fakes even be necessary, given the interviewee is very unlikely to be known by the interviewer? I suppose it could be used to fake accents, You have it backwards-- the point is accent elimination. You don't need to sound like someone else, but you do need to not sound like someone of your own locale.
- hgsgm 4y ago
  Accents can only be changed, not eliminated.
  - Calavar 4y ago
    That's a strange dichotomy to make. How is accent elimination different from an accent change from a nonstandard accent to a standard accent?
    - john-radio 4y ago
      He's just pointing out that the concept of "accent elimination" is obviously coming from someone who is in a mindset of, "I sometimes have coworkers who have accents, unlike me, who speaks in the default accent"
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - zarzavat 4y ago
        I believe that "accent" here refers to "phonetics of a foreign language applied by a non-native English speaker". i.e. German speakers who merge /w/ and /v/ because no such distinction exists in German. That's a different kind of accent from an American, British or Kiwi accent, etc, which are produced by divergent populations of native English speakers.
        eega 4y ago
        Why do you think that there isn’t any distinction between /w/ and /v/ in German? That’s simply not true …
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > You don't need to sound like someone else, but you do need to not sound like someone of your own locale. That doesn't make any sense though, given how many real tech workers are immigrants with accents. What you say does make sense for someone trying to do certain kinds of fraud (e.g. an Indian scammer pretending to be an IRS agent demanding iTunes gift cards), but not for applying for a tech job.
  - jstarfish 4y ago
    Immigrants are people you can hold legally accountable for fraud. Someone who catfishes their way into a remote-work job and is untouchable by domestic law, not so much. There are some ethnic boundaries across which some employers are not willing to entrust remote work, and the response by the impacted demographic appears to be to double down on the fraud that led to the stereotypes to begin with.
chrismarlow9 4y ago
Regarding 1, you setup a fake company and interview the candidate in multiple rounds. Record the interviews and then use them as input for deep fake. Edit: you could also approach them as a love interest and get the video through chats. I'd also be curious to see if there's an overlapping former employer between the candidates. If you found an archive of some employers zoom meetings you have all you need. Okay I'm gonna stop before I get paranoid.
- 13of40 4y ago
  In the second year of COVID I was hiring for a dev position and got a really good candidate who came across as a very bright, outgoing young woman, who got "hire" decisions from 4 of 4 interviewers. She worked with us for about 6 months remotely, but never turned her camera on after the interview loop, and in retrospect she seemed like a totally different person than who we interviewed. The conspiracy theorist in me says she used a double to do the interviews. No need to deep fake anyone.
  - chrismarlow9 4y ago
    Interviews as a service. Interesting idea and thanks for sharing.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    One of my previous leads suspects a contractor did something like this for an in-person role. We only did one or two phone interviews for such roles, and the guy did well enough to get brought on for a 3 month contract or something. The guy who showed up didn't seem to know as much as the interviewee, and was always on the phone. My lead suspected he was getting help from "somewhere else." In retrospect, he suspects the guy who showed up may have had a different foreign-country X regional accent than the person who interviewed, but it's impossible to know for sure. He speculated that some unscrupulous but relatively knowledgeable guy was sitting in for the interviews, and then coaching the incompetent applicants day to day for a cut of their pay. In the end he just let the contract lapse. Not a whole lot you can do since it would be really hard to prove any kind of malfeasance, and to make the accusation would just make you look crazy and paranoid.
heavyset_go 4y ago
> 1) Don't video deepfakes require lots of high-quality input video (which is why they were often made of Obama)? Where would an attacker get this for some rando? I imagine that at some point, or even now, we can use transfer learning for deep fakes and just train existing models on a limited data set for "good enough" deep fakes.

mirker 4y ago

Regarding 1) and following 2) you only need to make realistic-enough video that it passes as a person and is similar enough to the target person. For example, you can have a pretrained model (e.g., using zero targeted data) and search for some configuration that is closest to the target person. You only need to match a few variables (e.g., ethnicity, gender, hair color, age) before the fake is plausible.

jstarfish 4y ago

> Why would voice deep-fakes even be necessary, given the interviewee is very unlikely to be known by the interviewer? I suppose it could be used to fake accents, You have it backwards-- the point is accent elimination. You don't need to sound like someone else, but you do need to not sound like someone of your own locale.

hgsgm 4y ago
Accents can only be changed, not eliminated.
- Calavar 4y ago
  That's a strange dichotomy to make. How is accent elimination different from an accent change from a nonstandard accent to a standard accent?
  - john-radio 4y ago
    He's just pointing out that the concept of "accent elimination" is obviously coming from someone who is in a mindset of, "I sometimes have coworkers who have accents, unlike me, who speaks in the default accent"
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - zarzavat 4y ago
      I believe that "accent" here refers to "phonetics of a foreign language applied by a non-native English speaker". i.e. German speakers who merge /w/ and /v/ because no such distinction exists in German. That's a different kind of accent from an American, British or Kiwi accent, etc, which are produced by divergent populations of native English speakers.
      - eega 4y ago
        Why do you think that there isn’t any distinction between /w/ and /v/ in German? That’s simply not true …
tablespoon 4y ago
> You don't need to sound like someone else, but you do need to not sound like someone of your own locale. That doesn't make any sense though, given how many real tech workers are immigrants with accents. What you say does make sense for someone trying to do certain kinds of fraud (e.g. an Indian scammer pretending to be an IRS agent demanding iTunes gift cards), but not for applying for a tech job.
- jstarfish 4y ago
  Immigrants are people you can hold legally accountable for fraud. Someone who catfishes their way into a remote-work job and is untouchable by domestic law, not so much. There are some ethnic boundaries across which some employers are not willing to entrust remote work, and the response by the impacted demographic appears to be to double down on the fraud that led to the stereotypes to begin with.

chrismarlow9 4y ago

Regarding 1, you setup a fake company and interview the candidate in multiple rounds. Record the interviews and then use them as input for deep fake. Edit: you could also approach them as a love interest and get the video through chats. I'd also be curious to see if there's an overlapping former employer between the candidates. If you found an archive of some employers zoom meetings you have all you need. Okay I'm gonna stop before I get paranoid.

13of40 4y ago
In the second year of COVID I was hiring for a dev position and got a really good candidate who came across as a very bright, outgoing young woman, who got "hire" decisions from 4 of 4 interviewers. She worked with us for about 6 months remotely, but never turned her camera on after the interview loop, and in retrospect she seemed like a totally different person than who we interviewed. The conspiracy theorist in me says she used a double to do the interviews. No need to deep fake anyone.
- chrismarlow9 4y ago
  Interviews as a service. Interesting idea and thanks for sharing.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  One of my previous leads suspects a contractor did something like this for an in-person role. We only did one or two phone interviews for such roles, and the guy did well enough to get brought on for a 3 month contract or something. The guy who showed up didn't seem to know as much as the interviewee, and was always on the phone. My lead suspected he was getting help from "somewhere else." In retrospect, he suspects the guy who showed up may have had a different foreign-country X regional accent than the person who interviewed, but it's impossible to know for sure. He speculated that some unscrupulous but relatively knowledgeable guy was sitting in for the interviews, and then coaching the incompetent applicants day to day for a cut of their pay. In the end he just let the contract lapse. Not a whole lot you can do since it would be really hard to prove any kind of malfeasance, and to make the accusation would just make you look crazy and paranoid.

heavyset_go 4y ago

> 1) Don't video deepfakes require lots of high-quality input video (which is why they were often made of Obama)? Where would an attacker get this for some rando? I imagine that at some point, or even now, we can use transfer learning for deep fakes and just train existing models on a limited data set for "good enough" deep fakes.