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There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. Further, we have seen harm come from some of

by atty 4y ago

There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. Further, we have seen harm come from some of this already, there’s a pretty big online community that uses deepfakes to put people in situations they would rather not be in, the most obvious being porn.

carlosdp 4y ago
> There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. You couldn't, but basically any VFX shop easily could. Point is, it doesn't make anything possible that wasn't already possible, it just makes it more accessible. That's an inevitability with technology, as time goes on. The counter is not to try and suppress it, that has never worked and never will.
- derefr 4y ago
  What motivation would a VFX shop have to do such a thing, though? (Money, sure, but what's a motive strong enough to be worth commissioning them?) It's always individuals who want to harm others in this particular way; and individuals don't throw around big-VFX-project amounts of money on petty revenge. But they'd certainly spend $20. DDoS attacks got a lot (1000x) more commonplace once there were DDoS services that let you buy an hour of attacking someone for $20. Same idea here.
  - chii 4y ago
    and you can easily just drive your car into somebody to kill them. DDoS services are almost always purely malicious (you can _may be_ argue that you can use them for pen-testing or load-testing). But cars are not just purely malicious; there's a lot of useful things cars can do, and that's why the dangers of car ownership is outweighed by the benefits, as judged by society - we just have some road rules, and licenses, so that people know to use them responsibly. Why not the same with an AI model?
  - johannboehme 4y ago
    we are talking pictures atm. not videos. I bet you could get as good as SD with two weeks of free time, lots of youtube tutorials and with a photoshop license.
scarmig 4y ago
I'm going to take an unpopular position: there's no harm being done. It's not putting people in positions they would rather not be in, but putting their likeness into those situations. It's a key difference: if someone makes a paper mache of a naked Trump to use in a protest, is harm being done to him? The idea that it's "doing harm" is simply inventing a new form of lèse-majesté. Verbally, we regularly do the same: we might take a signifier for someone and place it in a representation. "Rick likes to fuck goats every day." Have I done harm to Rick?
- rgmerk 4y ago
  Be serious for a moment. If I circulated a convincing-looking video of Rick fucking goats to his parents, partner and his boss at the school where he works, that could easily do considerable harm to Rick.
  - zarzavat 4y ago
    I don’t think that is a good example, because the harm in that case is the embarrassment and you can achieve the same results in 10 minutes with any image editing software. For AI image generation to cause harm specifically, the harm has to be consequent to the additional realism. IMO most of the harm from AI is likely to come from people not believing things that are real, and dismissing reality with “that’s just a deepfake”.
    - Morgawr 4y ago
      > the harm in that case is the embarrassment and you can achieve the same results in 10 minutes with any image editing software The harm is not the "embarrassment" of seeing someone in the likeness of yourself (or your son, your friend, your partner, etc) doing something shameful. The harm is the fact that people are very likely to believe it is true and it's not a fake obviously edited photo or video. You can disagree on the seriousness of the harm or risk or danger or whatever but I think the distinction between an obviously silly/embarrassing fake (a puppet, papier mache, badly done photoshop picture) and a realistic convincing deepfake video is pretty obvious. They aren't even in the same ballpark. > IMO most of the harm from AI is likely to come from people not believing things that are real, and dismissing reality with “that’s just a deepfake”. This is also a really good point and I agree it's a danger.
Geee 4y ago
Deepfakes are just an extension of imagination. We can already imagine people in any situation, making an image of it doesn't cause any more harm.
- zakki 4y ago
  I don’t know why you put image and imagination in the same place. It is different. Imagination is the result of thinking. Image is the result of action. We can imagine killing people. Nobody harmed. But killing people in real life?
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Image is not the result of action, it's the projection of imagination into the physical world. In your example, the correct parallel isn't killing people in real life, it's making an image of killing people. The ethics of making such images are debatable, but they already permeate our society without AI.
    - taylorius 4y ago
      How do you know? The whole point of a deepfake is that it is indistinguishable from a photo of a real life event.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    I can imagine a person killing other people. I can draw a person killing other people. I can make a computer draw a person killing other people. In all three cases, zero people were harmed.
    - TuringTest 4y ago
      But if you if you spread the image in a forum of haters, you may incite someone to kill that person. That's why there are laws against harassment. The danger is not the existence of an image, it is the act of communication that has consequences.
XorNot 4y ago
Deepfakes have been very accessibly possible since 2019. Corridor did essentially the entire pipeline then: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBiNGufIJw&vl=en https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBiNGufIJw&vl=en You can download and run this software right now: http://faceswap.dev/ http://faceswap.dev/ and it will do a better job, and do it on video, then any AI image generator. The technology is over 3 years old and the world hasn't ended, the harassment hasn't happened. It's so common that your phone runs it for Instagram. There's this whole narrative here that "this harm is new" and not only is it not new, it's not even better then what we already had.

by atty 4y ago

carlosdp 4y ago

> There is a difference in ease of use. I could never use photoshop to fake something like that even if I wanted to. You couldn't, but basically any VFX shop easily could. Point is, it doesn't make anything possible that wasn't already possible, it just makes it more accessible. That's an inevitability with technology, as time goes on. The counter is not to try and suppress it, that has never worked and never will.

derefr 4y ago
What motivation would a VFX shop have to do such a thing, though? (Money, sure, but what's a motive strong enough to be worth commissioning them?) It's always individuals who want to harm others in this particular way; and individuals don't throw around big-VFX-project amounts of money on petty revenge. But they'd certainly spend $20. DDoS attacks got a lot (1000x) more commonplace once there were DDoS services that let you buy an hour of attacking someone for $20. Same idea here.
- chii 4y ago
  and you can easily just drive your car into somebody to kill them. DDoS services are almost always purely malicious (you can _may be_ argue that you can use them for pen-testing or load-testing). But cars are not just purely malicious; there's a lot of useful things cars can do, and that's why the dangers of car ownership is outweighed by the benefits, as judged by society - we just have some road rules, and licenses, so that people know to use them responsibly. Why not the same with an AI model?
- johannboehme 4y ago
  we are talking pictures atm. not videos. I bet you could get as good as SD with two weeks of free time, lots of youtube tutorials and with a photoshop license.

scarmig 4y ago

I'm going to take an unpopular position: there's no harm being done. It's not putting people in positions they would rather not be in, but putting their likeness into those situations. It's a key difference: if someone makes a paper mache of a naked Trump to use in a protest, is harm being done to him? The idea that it's "doing harm" is simply inventing a new form of lèse-majesté. Verbally, we regularly do the same: we might take a signifier for someone and place it in a representation. "Rick likes to fuck goats every day." Have I done harm to Rick?

rgmerk 4y ago
Be serious for a moment. If I circulated a convincing-looking video of Rick fucking goats to his parents, partner and his boss at the school where he works, that could easily do considerable harm to Rick.
- zarzavat 4y ago
  I don’t think that is a good example, because the harm in that case is the embarrassment and you can achieve the same results in 10 minutes with any image editing software. For AI image generation to cause harm specifically, the harm has to be consequent to the additional realism. IMO most of the harm from AI is likely to come from people not believing things that are real, and dismissing reality with “that’s just a deepfake”.
  - Morgawr 4y ago
    > the harm in that case is the embarrassment and you can achieve the same results in 10 minutes with any image editing software The harm is not the "embarrassment" of seeing someone in the likeness of yourself (or your son, your friend, your partner, etc) doing something shameful. The harm is the fact that people are very likely to believe it is true and it's not a fake obviously edited photo or video. You can disagree on the seriousness of the harm or risk or danger or whatever but I think the distinction between an obviously silly/embarrassing fake (a puppet, papier mache, badly done photoshop picture) and a realistic convincing deepfake video is pretty obvious. They aren't even in the same ballpark. > IMO most of the harm from AI is likely to come from people not believing things that are real, and dismissing reality with “that’s just a deepfake”. This is also a really good point and I agree it's a danger.

Geee 4y ago

Deepfakes are just an extension of imagination. We can already imagine people in any situation, making an image of it doesn't cause any more harm.

zakki 4y ago
I don’t know why you put image and imagination in the same place. It is different. Imagination is the result of thinking. Image is the result of action. We can imagine killing people. Nobody harmed. But killing people in real life?
- lolinder 4y ago
  Image is not the result of action, it's the projection of imagination into the physical world. In your example, the correct parallel isn't killing people in real life, it's making an image of killing people. The ethics of making such images are debatable, but they already permeate our society without AI.
  - taylorius 4y ago
    How do you know? The whole point of a deepfake is that it is indistinguishable from a photo of a real life event.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  I can imagine a person killing other people. I can draw a person killing other people. I can make a computer draw a person killing other people. In all three cases, zero people were harmed.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    But if you if you spread the image in a forum of haters, you may incite someone to kill that person. That's why there are laws against harassment. The danger is not the existence of an image, it is the act of communication that has consequences.

XorNot 4y ago

Deepfakes have been very accessibly possible since 2019. Corridor did essentially the entire pipeline then: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBiNGufIJw&vl=en https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3dBiNGufIJw&vl=en You can download and run this software right now: http://faceswap.dev/ http://faceswap.dev/ and it will do a better job, and do it on video, then any AI image generator. The technology is over 3 years old and the world hasn't ended, the harassment hasn't happened. It's so common that your phone runs it for Instagram. There's this whole narrative here that "this harm is new" and not only is it not new, it's not even better then what we already had.