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That is getting real freaking dystopian. Sure, we would have been able to do this before, and the Soviet Union did a ton of photo editing. But doing this partic
by juujian 3y ago
That is getting real freaking dystopian. Sure, we would have been able to do this before, and the Soviet Union did a ton of photo editing. But doing this particular edit must have been so easy. No cost at all, no mental barrier. You would almost think 'why bother'. And before anyone says 'yeah, but the truth came out'. Well, we saw it, but how many of the particular audience of whatever that outlet was will never see the original photo and will never question the narrative they were sold?
- EscapeFromNY 3y ago> yeah, but the truth came out The truth came out this time. To borrow from Ozark: this isn't the only time they doctored photos, it's the only time they got caught.
- lagolinguini 3y agoThe truth came out too late anyway. The fact that it's been fact checked doesn't matter. People wo want to believe in a certain agenda have already got the misinformation they need, and it's not like they're seeking out other sources to fact check their information. They're not even the target audience of people who are fact checking this misinformation so the damage is already done.
- matsemann 3y agoAnd those having seen the doctored images wont know (or care) that they were fake.
- gtirloni 3y agoExactly. Even when a major TV channels was busting fake news in my country, people just switched to other govt-sponsored (bribed?) channel to hear what they wanted to hear. It became a common meme to say that major TV channel has an agenda (and either silence or whataboustism ensues once people are questioned about the actual fake news).
- ryandrake 3y agoPeople will always switch to the brand of media that shows the truth that validates their existing beliefs. Today, there are a handful of "belief buckets" to choose from. In the USA, you have conservative news channels and mainstream news channels. You can pick your favorite source of truth, but they come as a package deal. If you strongly believe X is factual, you'll tune in to the channel that presents X as factual. That channel will also present Y and Z as factual, so you may slowly start believing Y and Z, too. The obvious end state of this all will be news channels customized per-person. It's already starting with the custom-tailored Facebook/Twitter feeds. If you personally believe A, Y, and C, but not X, B, or Z, your news reports will be customized to show A, Y, and C as factual and ridicule X, B, and Z. Someone else will get presented an entirely different set of facts. Once the algorithm knows your beliefs, AI can produce an unlimited number of articles confirming those beliefs, complete with photos, videos, sources, fact checks, official reports and references.
- passion__desire 3y agoJust use the word "Filter Bubble". It's cleaner. /Facebook meme
- scarface_74 3y agoI kind of knew that. But I didn’t realize how bad it was until the last few years. The WSJ, Forbes and the National Review were what I considered reliably conservative sites that I use to be able to quote to conservative friends. Once they turned against Trump, they became part of the untrusted “mainstream media”. Then when FoxNews called the 2020 election fairly, then they became sellouts and people started flocking to NewsMax. Whatever I thought of FoxNews over the years, I always thought their election night coverage was straight down the line. RedState kicked out all of their neverTrumpers because they were losing readers. Then conservatives started criticizing NewsMax when they would slightly push back against the “election was stolen” claims.
- jsheard 3y agoAlso the truth came out here, but I wonder if the truth will get out on Indian Twitter given that the Indian government is one of the most prolific issuers of Twitter takedowns, and the odds of them being approved has supposedly spiked from about 50% under the old leadership to about 99% since Elon took over. Previously governments had to expect some pushback against over-reaching takedown requests, but the new policy of rubber stamping nearly any request without a second thought means it's open season for them to censor anything inconvenient. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-fulfilling-more-government-censorship-requests-under-musk https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-fulfillin...
- actionfromafar 3y agoMm, can’t wait to live on Mars with chairman Elon.
- pjc50 3y agoThat is what a lot of us think the real threat of "AI" is: not that it will autonomously produce bad outcomes for humanity, but because it's a tool that's indifferent to truth or falsehood it allows any kind of truth or reality based politics to be totally flooded out of the public sphere. Everyone ends up fighting in the hall of mirrors.
- EGreg 3y ago[flagged]
- dagmx 3y agoHow would the Web3 concept solve this?
- pjc50 3y agoI'm not sure what you're arguing here?
- confoundcofound 3y agoI suspect they’re referring to using blockchain as a system of cryptographically-verified facts and shared reality to counteract the AI risk you mention. Why was GP flagged? They made a good point.
- 3y ago
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoIMO it doesn't even matter if the truth comes out, the truth wasn't first.
- Varqu 3y agoI think the primary issue is that, while internet users usually question the authenticity of photos (as a normal practice), they tend to subconsciously trust what they see in videos. It will require a significant mental shift to now question practically every single piece of audiovisual content.
- gattilorenz 3y ago> internet users usually question the authenticity of photos Maybe _you_ do that, but I would not generalize, and I would not necessarily think I’m always capable of doing that myself “by default”
- CamperBob2 3y agoI used to think this problem would solve itself, in that once people were fooled a few times, they'd stop being so easy to fool. The Trump era shut down that quaint idealistic notion. Turns out a lot of people -- maybe all of us to some extent -- actively enjoy being fooled. It makes for a communal experience that we'd otherwise miss out on, or something.
- Varqu 3y agoYeah, the problem is that it's surprisingly easy to fall for the fake if it re-affirms your world view.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoI'd hope that people don't like in a world where they believe they have to question the authenticity of everything they see. Why would they keep using the internet at all? And what psychological impact does that have when you view the world assuming everything may be a lie?
- shaan7 3y agoI am hoping that AI tooling like this becomes even more widespread (Google Photos is doing that) that more people will finally understand that they cannot trust everything they see online. I hope.
- pjc50 3y agoThat is not an improvement, because it turns "online" (which is basically everything everywhere - all news media, TV, newspapers) into a politically useless wasteland.
- tdehnel 3y agoIt could just as well be an improvement that makes people smarter, because they will learn not to just believe what they see/hear/read. Instead, they will have to learn to identify good explanations and rule out bad explanations.
- lolinder 3y ago"Online" is already a useless, trustless wasteland and has been since at least 2014. If this causes people to finally see it then maybe we can collectively build something better.
- ceejayoz 3y agoBut the conclusion becomes “you can’t trust anything”. I worry about a civilization that can’t agree on even the most basic of facts.
- LightBug1 3y agoWelcome ... to the desert of the real.
- denton-scratch 3y agoIt's not “you can’t trust anything”. It's "you can’t trust anything you're told”. And that's nothing new. We have been lying since we figured out how to talk. The sky is not falling.
- jvanderbot 3y agoJust wait until POWs start denouncing their former armies, or KIAs magically return home, or Ukrainian children in Russian families start magically saying how much better it is, etc etc. The demoralizing effect of watching a loved one do this would be immense.
- mrtesthah 3y agothat all happens already when they are forced by their captors say it willingly to remain safe and alive.
- skinnymuch 3y ago[flagged]
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Is there something dystopian about India or Soviet Union that is unlike the Global North?" Actually, I would place the soviet union in the global north (you cannot go much further north, than russia is). And the difference is the extent, what they did to rewrite history. The famous removal of Trotzki out of revolution pictures, after he was not with the main party anymore. Stuff like this, did not happen in the west. Lots of other manipulation and misinformation, sure, but not blatantly rewriting history.
- ceejayoz 3y agoGeographic location isn’t the only aspect of “Global North/South”. Australia is considered part of the North grouping.
- hutzlibu 3y agoSure, same with west/east https://xkcd.com/503/ https://xkcd.com/503/ But it still makes no sense to me, to exclude russia from the global north.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThere’s a pretty clear split between Russia and the nations in the “Global North”. Almost all of them have Russia under severe sanctions right now.
- hutzlibu 3y agoThere also was never a clear political union between geographical west and east. I think it just makes no sense using these terminology.
- 3y ago
- yalogin 3y agoThe truth comes out but the pro fascist people will have the ammo to keep lying about and repeating the lie. A percentage of the rest will believe it. They keep chipping away like that
- lolinder 3y agoThis phase won't last long in the grand scheme of things. We've had about 150 years in which people have been conditioned to trust anything that they see in a photograph, but it's always been possible to fake it and for the last 30 years it's been getting dramatically easier. AI just brings us full circle back to the era of woodcuts—just because you see a photorealistic image or hear an audio recording does not mean it's real. We're likely going to see a few cases like this that take off while people are adapting, but this naivete won't last forever. There will always be a few gullible people, but, just like with Photoshop, we'll get to the point where most people understand what's possible and adapt their reactions accordingly.
- api 3y agoThe era of easy to reproduce but hard to fake media is actually the historical outlier. Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone can make up anything they want in that domain. Before that most people were illiterate so it didn’t matter much. Media wasn’t even much of a thing. We are headed for the post-media era when any arbitrary piece of media depicting anything can be created for little or no money by anyone with a computer. Nothing can be believed unless you were there or hear it from a known reliable source that was there. There’s going to be an ugly transition period when we have tons of people who haven’t gotten this memo yet. These people are going to be manipulated en masse with tremendous effectiveness. The push to deplatform misinformation is largely an attempt to stop this, but I think it’s futile. People just have to learn that media is dead and they can’t trust anything anymore. Hunter Thompson was ahead of his time. The only journalism worth doing in this future is individual gonzo journalism where you go and experience and tell the tale directly to your audience. That of course is vulnerable to spin by the teller, but so are all tales. It’s the best we have. Hopefully honest tellers of first hand tales will exist and get the reputation for honesty they deserve.
- juujian 3y ago> Before that media was written text and everyone knows anyone can make up anything they want in that domain. From what I gather, Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico was pretty much fanfiction (had somebody write?) about himself. This problem may be older than I thought.
- SecretDreams 3y agoNah, this is fine.
- lucubratory 3y agoI know hundreds of people have already seen this, but maybe at least some people will see this: these edits were most probably made with a 6 year old face editing app. They are not caused by Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, or any other recent AI "stuff".