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I think it's smart to start trying things here. This has infinite flaws with it, but from a business and learnings standpoint it's a step toward the right direc

• jjcm 3y ago
  One black hat thing I'm curious about though is whether or not this tag can be weaponized. If I upload a real event and tag it as AI, will it reduce user trust that the real event ever happened?
  • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    The AI tags are fundamentally useless. The premise is that it would prevent someone from misleading you by thinking that something happened when it didn't, but someone who wants to do that would just not tag it then. Which is where the real abuse comes in: You post footage of a real event and they say it was AI, and ban you for it etc., because what actually happened is politically inconvenient. And the only way to prevent that would be a reliable way to detect AI-generated content which, if it existed, would obviate any need to tag anything because then it could be automated.
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    • anigbrowl 3y ago
      Not convinced by this. Camera sensors have measurable individual noise, if you record RAW that won't be fakeable without prior access to the device. You'd have a straightforward case for defamation if your real footage were falsely labeled, and it would be easy to demonstrate in court.
      • AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        > Camera sensors have measurable individual noise, if you record RAW that won't be fakeable without prior access to the device. Which doesn't help you unless non-AI images are all required to be RAW. Moreover, someone who is trying to fabricate something could obviously obtain access to a real camera to emulate. > You'd have a straightforward case for defamation if your real footage were falsely labeled, and it would be easy to demonstrate in court. Defamation typically requires you to prove that the person making the claim knew it was false. They'll, of course, claim that they thought it was actually fake. Also, most people don't have the resources to sue YouTube for their screw ups.
        • anigbrowl 3y ago
          Moreover, someone who is trying to fabricate something could obviously obtain access to a real camera to emulate. Yes, but not to your camera. Sorry for not phrasing it more clearly: individual cameras have measurable noise signatures distinct from otherwise identical models. On the lawsuit side, you just need to aver that you are the author of the original footage and are willing to prove it. As long as you are in possession of both the device and the footage, you have two pieces of solid evidence vs. someone elses feels/half-assed AI detection algorithm. There will be no shortage of tech-savvy media lawyers willing to take this case on contingency.
  • sangnoir 3y ago
    I suspect we're headed into a world of attestation via cryptographically signed videos. If you're the sole witness, then you can reduce the trust in the event, however, if it's a major event, then we can fall back on existing news-gathering machinery to validate and counter your false tagging (e.g. if a BBC camera captured the event, or there is some other corroboration & fact checking).
    • smt88 3y ago
      How does the signature help? It only proves that the video hasn't been altered since [timestamp]. It doesn't prove that it wasn't AI-generated or manipulated.
      • leoqa 3y ago
        If I have a CCTV camera that is in a known location and a TPM that signs its footage, I could probably convince a jury that it’s legit in the face of a deepfake defense. That’s the bar- it’s not going to be infallible but if you don’t find evidence of tampering with the hardware then it’s probably going to be fine.
        • Gigachad 3y ago
          This might be worse than nothing. It's exactly the same tech as DRM, which is good enough to stop the average person, but where tons of people have private exploits stashed away to crack it. So the judge and general public trust the system to be basically foolproof, while criminals can forge fake signatures using keys they extracted from the hardware.
      • sangnoir 3y ago
        Signatures are also able to (mostly) signal that a specific device (and/or application on that device) captured the video. It would be possible to check if a video was encoded by a specific instance of an iOS Camera app or AfterEffects on PC. Everything else - corroboration, interviews, fact checking will remain as they are today and can't be replaced by technology. So I imagine a journalist would reach out to person who recorded thr video, ask them to show their device's fingerprint and ask about their experience when (event) occured, and then corroborate all that information from other sources. When the news org publishes the video, they may sign it with their own key and/or vouch for the original one so viewers of clips on social media will know that Fox News (TM) is putting their name and reputation behind the video, and it hasn't been altered from the version Fox News chose to share, even though the "ModernMilitiaMan97" account that reshared it seems dubious. Currently, there's no way to detect alterations or fabrications of both the "citizen-journalist" footage and post-broadcast footage.
  • JohnFen 3y ago
    I fear that we're barrelling fast toward a future when nobody can trust anything at all anymore, label or not.
    • nonethewiser 3y ago
      We have to expect people to think for themselves. People are flawed and will be deceived but trying to centralize critical thinking will have far more disastrous results. Its always been that way. Im not saying Youtube shouldn’t have AI labels. Im saying we shouldn’t assume they’re reliable.
      • Barrin92 3y ago
        >but trying to centralize critical thinking will have far more disastrous results No. Having sources of trust is the basis of managing complexity. When you turned the tap water on and bought a piece of meat at the butcher you didn't yourself verify whether its healthy right? You trust the medicine you buy contains exactly what is says on the label and didn't take a chemistry class. That's centralized trust. You rely on it ten thousand times a day implicitly. There need to be measures to make sure media content is trustworthy, because the smartest person on the earth doesn't have enough resources to critically judge 1% of what they're exposed to every day. It is simply a question of information processing. It's a mathematical necessity. Information that is collectively processed constantly goes up, individiual bandwith does not, therefore you need more division of labor, efficieny and higher forms of social organisation.
        • nonethewiser 3y ago
          > Having sources of trust is the basis of managing complexity. This is a false equivalence that I’ve already addressed. > When you turned the tap water on and bought a piece of meat at the butcher you didn't yourself verify whether its healthy right? To a degree, yeah, you do check. Especially when you get it from somewhere with prior problems. And if you see something off you check further and adjust accordingly. Why resort to anology? Should we blindly trust YouTube to judge whats true or not? I stated that labeling videos is fine but what’s not fine is blindly trusting it. Additionally, comparing to meat dispenses with all the controversy because food safety is a comparatively objective standard. Compare, “is this steak safe to eat or not?” To “is this speech safe to hear or not?”
  • Aeolun 3y ago
    Having the tag weaponizes it by itself, because people will now consider any content without the tag real, whether it actually is or not.
  • drexlspivey 3y ago
    The labels collected by google will certainly be used to train classifiers to detect AI created content so I think that’s a legit concern.
  • Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    If you upload a real event but you're the only source, it'll be doubted anyway; see also, most UFO sightings.
  • jonathankoren 3y ago
    Absolutely. Mass reporting for content violations to attack someone has been a tactic decades.
  • deadbabe 3y ago
    This isn’t strictly some blackhat thing, people will attempt to hand wave inconvenient evidence against them as AI generated and build reasonable doubt.
• 4ndrewl 3y ago
  It's to comply with the EU AI regulatory framework. This step is just additional cost they wouldn't have voluntarily burdened themselves with.
• okdood64 3y ago
  I know people on HN love to hate on Google, but at least they're a major platform that's TRYING. Mistakes will be made, but let's at least attempt at moving forward.
• uconnectlol 3y ago
  [flagged]
• tkiolp4 3y ago
  Basically, Google decides what’s real and what’s not. Cool.
  • pizzafeelsright 3y ago
    For at least a dozen years it would seem.
  • smt88 3y ago
    On their own platforms, yes. We need to break up their monopolies so that their choices don't matter as much.
  • barfbagginus 3y ago
    Don't worry Google has become incompetent - it is in the "Fading AOL" portion of its life cycle. Do you remember how incontinent AOL became in the final minutes before it became completely irrelevant? Sure it's taking longer with Google. But it's not a process that they can reverse. That means the system will be really really awful. So challengers can arise - maybe a challenger that YOU build, and open source!
    • surajrmal 3y ago
      I think you're living in a bubble if you believe that.
      • immibis 3y ago
        That open source can replace corporate centralization? Since centralized platforms started extracting more profits (including manipulation) things like Fediverse are on the rise. For mindless browsing, centralized is still king for now (Fediverse also works to an extent) but if your site has something better than what's on the centralized corporate platform, people will go there once they learn about it. We're on Hacker News instead of Reddit because?
      • barfbagginus 3y ago
        1. Google lost the battle for LLMs, and cannot win that battle without putting a nail in the coffin of its own search monetization strategy 2. Google search is now no better than DDG, which it also cannot recover from without putting a nail in the coffin of its own search monetization strategy If you want a randomly accuse me of living in a bubble that's fine. It won't bother me one bit. Me living in a bubble doesn't change the fact that Google is backed into a corner when it comes to search quality and competing with LLMs.
• randmeerkat 3y ago
  > Alters footage of a real event or place I wonder if this will make all forms of surveillance, video or otherwise, inadmissible in court in the near future. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for a lawyer to make an argument for reasonable doubt, with any electronic media now.
  • Eiim 3y ago
    Bad evidence is not the same thing as inadmissible evidence. Evidence is admitted, and then the fact finder determines whether to consider it, and how much weight to give it. It is likely that surveillance video will be slightly less credible now, but can still be part of a large, convincing body of evidence.
  • leoqa 3y ago
    There will be a new side gig for ‘experts’ to explain deepfakes to a jury.
  • tsimionescu 3y ago
    Video evidence already requires attestation to be admissible evidence. You need a witness to claim that the footage comes from a camera that was placed there, that it was collected from the night of, etc. It's not like the prosecutor gets a tape in the mail and they can present it as evidence.
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    > I wonder if this will make all forms of surveillance, video or otherwise, inadmissible in court in the near future. No, it won't. Just as it does now, video evidence (like any other evidence that isn't testimony) will need to be supported by associated evidence (including, ultimately, testimony) as to its provenance. > It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch for a lawyer to make an argument for reasonable doubt, “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is only the standard for criminal convictions, and even then is based on the totality of evidence tending support or refute guilt, its not a standard each individual piece of evidence must clear for admissibility.
  • Intralexical 3y ago
    By that rationale, all witness testimony and written evidence should already be inadmissible. This website focuses too much on the technical with little regard for the social a bit too often. Though in general, videos being easily fakable is still scary.
• yosito 3y ago
  As someone who studied video production two decades ago, regarding the criteria you mentioned for AI: - Makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn't say or do - Alters footage of a real event or place - Generates a realistic-looking scene that didn't actually occur These are things that have been true of edited video since even before AI was a thing. People can lie about reality with videos, and AI is just one of many tools to do so. So, as you said, there are many flaws with this approach, but I agree that requiring labels is at least a step in the right direction.
  • okanat 3y ago
    For videos that requires pretty significant effort even today to be done by hand. Humans don't scale. AI does. I think anonymity is completely dead now. Not due to social networks but AI will definitely kill it. With enough resources it is possible to engage an AI arms race against whatever detector they put. It is also possible to remove any watermarking. So the only way to prove if the content is made by humans will be requiring extensive proofs to their complete identity. If you're from a minority or a fringe group, all of your hopes about spreading awareness anonymously on popular social media will be gone.
• lysp 3y ago
  I think it also gives them a legal / business remedy if people fail to label their content. If someone for example makes a political video and fails to label it, they can delete the video/terminate the account for a breach of service.
  • sverhagen 3y ago
    Given the regular stories posted on HN about folks who've had some aspect of their social or other media canceled by any some SaaS company, are these companies having many (legal) qualms as it is about canceling people without providing a good reason for it? Would be nice if they did, though...
    • GauntletWizard 3y ago
      I'd much prefer Google cancel capriciously with solid TOS backing to it than without, but I'll complain about their double standards about what they choose to censor... Not regardless, but without a doubt, because Google will choose to selectively enforce this rule.
    • YetAnotherNick 3y ago
      At the very least it wouldn't be bad for PR if Google bans someone for specifically breaking a clear TOS.
      • victorbjorklund 3y ago
        Always gonna be greyzones. Someone with a 60 min video where everything is real except 10 sec of insignificant b-roll footage
  • chii 3y ago
    but this gives room to also abuse the uncertainty to censor anyone without recourse - by arguing such and such video is "AI" (true or not), they have a plausiblely deniable reason to remove a video. Power is power - can be used for good or bad. This labelling is a form of power.
• albert_e 3y ago
  And some of these questions apply to more traditional video editing techniques also. If someone says "I am not a crook" and you edit out the "not", do you need to label it. What if it is done for parody. What if the edit is more subtle - where a 1 hour interview is edited into 10 minute excerpts. Mislabeled videos for propaganda. Or simply date or place incorrectly stated. Dramatic recreations as often done in documentaries. Etc
• mjevans 3y ago
  Truth in 'advertising' is important. >> 17th angle - AI Generated vantage point based on existing 16 videos (reference links). << Would be • Alters footage of a real event or place
• hackernewds 3y ago
  keep holding ourselves back with poorly written legislation designed to garner votes while rival companies take strides in the technology at rapid rates
  • Intralexical 3y ago
    > keep holding ourselves back Not everyone works in ML. > with poorly written legislation This is a company policy, not legislation. > designed to garner votes Represent the will of the people? > while rival companies take strides Towards? > in the technology at rapid rates YouTube's "Trending" page isn't a research lab. Even if it was, why would honesty slow it down?
• Intralexical 3y ago
  I think the real benefit for this is that probably that it establishes trust as the default, and acts as a discriminator for good-faith uses of "AI". If most non-malicious uses of ML are transparently disclosed, and that's normalized, then it should be easier to identify and focus on bad-faith uses.
• HlessClaudesman 3y ago
  Porn classification / regulation boils down to: "I'll know it when I see it." Implying the existence of some hyper vigilant seer who can heroically determine what we should keep behind the video storre curtain of dencey, as if no grey areas exist. This also has the problem of requiring actual unbiased humans to view and accurately assess everything, which of course does not scale. Perhaps AI classification is the mirror opposite to porn, using the test: "I'll know it when I don't see it", ie, if an average user would mistake AI generated content for reality, it should be clearly labeled as AI. But how do we enforce this? Does such enforcement scale? What about malicious actors? We could conceivably use good AI to spot the bad AI, an endless AI cat and AI mouse game. Without strong AI regulation and norms a large portion of the internet will devolve into AI responding to AI generated content, seems like a gigantic waste of resources and the internet's potential.
  • electrondood 3y ago
    The great thing about AI, is that it's exactly optimized for discriminating in gray areas with difficult-to-articulate rules like "I'll know it when I see it."
    • dumpsterlid 3y ago
      You mean it is exactly optimized to extend our conscious and unconscious biases to gray areas in an inconsistent and arbitrary way?
    • escapedmoose 3y ago
      How so? I’ve previously thought that gray areas were an AI weakness, so I’m interested to hear the opposite perspective.
  • hobo_in_library 3y ago
    > We could conceivably use good AI to spot the bad AI I suspect this is Google's actual goal with the tagging system. It's not so much about helping users, rather it's a way to collect labeled data which they can later use to train their own "AI detection" algorithms
• jliptzin 3y ago
  At some point fairly soon we will probably have to label everything as AI generated until proven otherwise
• rileymat2 3y ago
  But why does it matter if it was generated by AI instead of generated like Forest Gump?
  • dragonwriter 3y ago
    Because right now AI is an issue the public and policymakers are concerned about, and this is to show that private industry can take adequate steps to control it to stave up government regulation while the attention is high.
    • hacker_junky 3y ago
      agreed. also, I think it will have the secondary effect of users rewarding non-ai content, and discourage ai generated content makers.
• dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I am curious to see the legal arguments that will inevitably kick up from each of these Google policy isn't law; there's no court judging legal arguments, it is enforced at Google’s whim and with effectively no recourse, at least not one which is focused on parsing arguments about the details of the policy. So there won’t be “legal arguments” over what exactly it applies to.
  • peddling-brink 3y ago
    Can’t they be sued for breach of contract if they aren’t following their own tos? Having a rule like this gives them leeway to remove what they consider harmful.
    • immibis 3y ago
      No, because the ToS says they can do anything they want to. The purpose of a ToS is to set an expectation on which things the company will tolerate users doing. It's (almost always) not legally binding for either party.
• canadianfella 3y ago
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