High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos(apnews.com)
apnews.com
High-tech deception of ‘deepfake’ videos
https://www.apnews.com/21fa207a1254401197fd1e0d7ecd14cb/I-never-said-that!-High-tech-deception-of-%27deepfake%27-videos
12 comments
Unfortunately, even if we can pull it off "cryptographically signing a video" doesn't "solve" the problem. How would that verification be presented to a user? How/why would it influence their beliefs/actions?
(As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I go into a bit more detail here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/... )
Will try to write a HN friendly tldr/update soon.
(As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I go into a bit more detail here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/... )
Will try to write a HN friendly tldr/update soon.
> the amount of cooperation we'd need between camera makers and video distribution platforms
Apple could single-handedly launch a "verified video" system.
Apple could single-handedly launch a "verified video" system.
Dear Tim,
Please build this.
— everyone
Please build this.
— everyone
To make it feasible you don't need much, just journalists signing videos and uploading them somewhere besides publishing anywhere unsigned. This will make every unsigned video easily verifiable, just not with crypto.
In the last years there have been quite a few cases of journalists resigning from very prestigious publications (NYT, ...) because they were caught fabricating news.
Yeah, well, it doesn't matter much whether they use false information or not, as their purpose is to paint a picture they want people to see either way.
> To make it feasible you don't need much, just journalists signing videos and uploading them somewhere besides publishing anywhere unsigned.
And in order to implement that, you'll be talking to people who'd sign a video by getting a pen, some paper, and a flatbed scanner.
I'm not entirely joking. My point is that this proves that there comes a point in every field where technical illiteracy goes from being annoying for you (you can't use the best tools anymore, and your workflow is now sub-par) to annoying for others (you can't collaborate effectively) to completely unworkable, as when your work product is now worthless because you can't demonstrate it isn't a cheap forgery. And some people are just not technical, through stubbornness or otherwise. This transition will hurt.
Maybe tools will follow the demand. I'm not entirely sanguine.
And in order to implement that, you'll be talking to people who'd sign a video by getting a pen, some paper, and a flatbed scanner.
I'm not entirely joking. My point is that this proves that there comes a point in every field where technical illiteracy goes from being annoying for you (you can't use the best tools anymore, and your workflow is now sub-par) to annoying for others (you can't collaborate effectively) to completely unworkable, as when your work product is now worthless because you can't demonstrate it isn't a cheap forgery. And some people are just not technical, through stubbornness or otherwise. This transition will hurt.
Maybe tools will follow the demand. I'm not entirely sanguine.
That's fine for journalists, but does nothing to prevent fakes captured by the populace. A good deal of our journalism now is by on scene witnesses. What can we do about fakes posted on social media purported to be the real capture of some scandal or event?
I think what we'll see is something less like the Jordan Peele version of Obama based on a public clip, and something more like a faked version of the Romney 47% video
Start with something naturally unfocused and exists only as a one off original, and it would be extremely hard to disprove without comparing it to other video of the same event.
Start with something naturally unfocused and exists only as a one off original, and it would be extremely hard to disprove without comparing it to other video of the same event.
We are already vulnerable to this attack, they are just called "viral marketing campaigns".
Doctored audio and video isn't really a new problem though. More prosaically, you could just redact a recording to give a misleading impression and not rely on any fancy technology.
The best solution (IMO of course) is to stop unquestionably believing anything you see, read, or hear. Why most people choose otherwise has saddened me since childhood.
The worst solution is to panic and attempt to ban technology like this insuring that only the bad actors will use it.
I want everyone down to kids to be able to make fake videos to their little heart's content so we can all internalize this inevitable Black Mirrorization of reality.
And your proposed solution is fantastic BTW. Unfortunately, there are more than enough bad actors among us to social engineer those signatures out of otherwise trustworthy agencies and a general lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of most people to even bother to check for such things. Imagine the day we have a video where HRC confesses to the pedophile colony on Mars and coming up next, Trump tells everyone where he buried the bodies, and if people look, there will be bodies there (never mind that they're stolen cadavers). How will people cope with a world like this?
It is almost like we need pop art and pop culture to drive this point home before political mass media does it in the worst possible way.
The worst solution is to panic and attempt to ban technology like this insuring that only the bad actors will use it.
I want everyone down to kids to be able to make fake videos to their little heart's content so we can all internalize this inevitable Black Mirrorization of reality.
And your proposed solution is fantastic BTW. Unfortunately, there are more than enough bad actors among us to social engineer those signatures out of otherwise trustworthy agencies and a general lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of most people to even bother to check for such things. Imagine the day we have a video where HRC confesses to the pedophile colony on Mars and coming up next, Trump tells everyone where he buried the bodies, and if people look, there will be bodies there (never mind that they're stolen cadavers). How will people cope with a world like this?
It is almost like we need pop art and pop culture to drive this point home before political mass media does it in the worst possible way.
| The best solution (IMO of course) is to stop unquestionably believing anything you see, read, or hear. Why most people choose otherwise has saddened me since childhood.
Agreed, but I think it's been long proven most people do. People hear what they want to hear. Maybe that will change, but I'd say it seems unlikely at this point.
| he worst solution is to panic and attempt to ban technology like this insuring that only the bad actors will use it.
Very true.
| I want everyone down to kids to be able to make fake videos to their little heart's content so we can all internalize this inevitable Black Mirrorization of reality.
Increasingly getting there. It only takes one person to make a nice GUI, post it to github.
| How will people cope with a world like this?
Probably poorly if history has taught us anything.
| It is almost like we need pop art and pop culture to drive this point home before political mass media does it in the worst possible way.
Very intriguing. Traditionally, art and culture change as a reaction to current affairs, as opposed to a pre-emption. I'm not sure how to pragmatically flip that paradigm.
Agreed, but I think it's been long proven most people do. People hear what they want to hear. Maybe that will change, but I'd say it seems unlikely at this point.
| he worst solution is to panic and attempt to ban technology like this insuring that only the bad actors will use it.
Very true.
| I want everyone down to kids to be able to make fake videos to their little heart's content so we can all internalize this inevitable Black Mirrorization of reality.
Increasingly getting there. It only takes one person to make a nice GUI, post it to github.
| How will people cope with a world like this?
Probably poorly if history has taught us anything.
| It is almost like we need pop art and pop culture to drive this point home before political mass media does it in the worst possible way.
Very intriguing. Traditionally, art and culture change as a reaction to current affairs, as opposed to a pre-emption. I'm not sure how to pragmatically flip that paradigm.
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The last 20 years certain elements have been pushing distrust and hatred for both politicians and journalists.
However I'd hope that we move to some agreed standard of signing of videos, so their source can be confirmed by the player. It doesn't matter if that source is the bbc, washington post, alex jones, national enquirer, the onion, or "Bob Joe Billy-Bob the Third", it means you know where the video came from, and can trust (or not) it based on that information.
A video with a bbc banner showing the president saying something could easily be faked. One that is signed by the BBC will only be fake if the BBC itself is publishing it as a fake, and that comes with a reputational impact.
Sites that reversion that video (recompress it etc) can simply sign it by themselves. They could claim that they took an original BBC item to do it, and then it's how much you trust that site.
People see someone, be it Donald Trump, or John Simpson, or Walter Mondale, and instinctively know that person said what they can see. That's changing, and it's going to be a long time before our brains change. Even now, you read some rubbish that you consciously know is rubbish, but part of it lodges in your subconcious and affects your thinking down the line. At least if you know who created the video, it gives you a fighting chance.
With this system anyone can still publish, even anonymously, but reputations are hard to gain and easy to lose. I don't like the daily mail, but I know if they publish a video of Obama saying "Killmonger was right, and President Trump is a total and complete dipshit", I'll probably believe he did. If he didn't, that will come out, and the daily mail is off the list of sources I trust to not make crap up (rather than just bend things), and it makes it far easier for reasonable people to dismiss it.
This moves the onus on news sources to be more discerning in their facts, but if they get it wrong then they lose their readers. By signing the news, they are backing it with their reputation. If Alex Jones has signed it, then he's putting his reputation on the line (if he has any reputation for saying something).
However I'd hope that we move to some agreed standard of signing of videos, so their source can be confirmed by the player. It doesn't matter if that source is the bbc, washington post, alex jones, national enquirer, the onion, or "Bob Joe Billy-Bob the Third", it means you know where the video came from, and can trust (or not) it based on that information.
A video with a bbc banner showing the president saying something could easily be faked. One that is signed by the BBC will only be fake if the BBC itself is publishing it as a fake, and that comes with a reputational impact.
Sites that reversion that video (recompress it etc) can simply sign it by themselves. They could claim that they took an original BBC item to do it, and then it's how much you trust that site.
People see someone, be it Donald Trump, or John Simpson, or Walter Mondale, and instinctively know that person said what they can see. That's changing, and it's going to be a long time before our brains change. Even now, you read some rubbish that you consciously know is rubbish, but part of it lodges in your subconcious and affects your thinking down the line. At least if you know who created the video, it gives you a fighting chance.
With this system anyone can still publish, even anonymously, but reputations are hard to gain and easy to lose. I don't like the daily mail, but I know if they publish a video of Obama saying "Killmonger was right, and President Trump is a total and complete dipshit", I'll probably believe he did. If he didn't, that will come out, and the daily mail is off the list of sources I trust to not make crap up (rather than just bend things), and it makes it far easier for reasonable people to dismiss it.
This moves the onus on news sources to be more discerning in their facts, but if they get it wrong then they lose their readers. By signing the news, they are backing it with their reputation. If Alex Jones has signed it, then he's putting his reputation on the line (if he has any reputation for saying something).
> A video with a bbc banner showing the president saying something could easily be faked. One that is signed by the BBC will only be fake if the BBC itself is publishing it as a fake, and that comes with a reputational impact.
Nobody cares much about the reputational impact. Fringe tabloid fake-news, and mainstream 'fake'-news gets plenty of viewers.
BBC itself has manufactured video 'evidence' during the Libyan war. [1] Yet, most people think it's an accurate source of news.
[1] Their 'live broadcasts' showed video of people in India waving the Indian tri-color, which the BBC has claimed was rebels in Libya's Green Square waving the old Libyan tri-color. But, eh, who cares about honesty - when you've got a politically sensitive story to tell.
Nobody cares much about the reputational impact. Fringe tabloid fake-news, and mainstream 'fake'-news gets plenty of viewers.
BBC itself has manufactured video 'evidence' during the Libyan war. [1] Yet, most people think it's an accurate source of news.
[1] Their 'live broadcasts' showed video of people in India waving the Indian tri-color, which the BBC has claimed was rebels in Libya's Green Square waving the old Libyan tri-color. But, eh, who cares about honesty - when you've got a politically sensitive story to tell.
My issue is that I don’t think I know of a news org that I trust to be both ethical and correct enough that their banner would matter enough for a significant video.
CBS and Dan Rather takes documents months before the 2004 election [0] and Rather still have 400k+ twitter followers. Even BBC didn’t cover the Iraq War properly when we really needed it to [1].
I read news for opinion and some awareness. But I’d trust a video of Trump strangling a hobo about the same from BBC as TMZ and would need a lot of verification.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3890821.stm
CBS and Dan Rather takes documents months before the 2004 election [0] and Rather still have 400k+ twitter followers. Even BBC didn’t cover the Iraq War properly when we really needed it to [1].
I read news for opinion and some awareness. But I’d trust a video of Trump strangling a hobo about the same from BBC as TMZ and would need a lot of verification.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3890821.stm
The only thing that can be done is use contextual evidence to disprove the possibility of a video being real but that puts a disproportionate on the victim of a fake video.
Will the government be in the business of commenting on the veracity of whatever video(s) they anticipate coming? And if they say it's fake (or real), will the public believe them?
Will the government be in the business of commenting on the veracity of whatever video(s) they anticipate coming? And if they say it's fake (or real), will the public believe them?
It will go back to being like a newspaper, where you can fake-quote anybody saying anything. Only established sources with some reputation on the line will be trustable. A random citizen won't be able to whip out a cell phone and get evidence that will be taken seriously. Credibility will be more centralized again.
Can we develop something to put in videos that are real? Maybe something built into the software or maybe even some icon you have to hold up behind someone like the president to at least make deepfakes difficult/impossible? Just spit-balling as I also see no point in video analysis
You need to develop a unique, unpredictable set of expressions that deepfake will be unable to fake.
Or perhaps active tattoos that display private key signed messages that describe what they’re saying and doing.
Or perhaps active tattoos that display private key signed messages that describe what they’re saying and doing.
We already have developed something. Only thing missing now is cultural shift in the media to apply a little bit of effort into signing videos.
That might be solving the wrong problem. You could believe that a video is from a particular journalist, but you might not trust that the journalist didn't tamper with the video before publishing it.
Deepfakes are surely no more a "problem" than photoshopped still images?
Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't trust a still image unless its authenticity can be corroborated somehow.
The deepfake tech merely puts video into the same category of (un)trustworthiness. The potential for abuse depends on people's trust that video is always authentic. So the "solution" is simply to make it as widely-known as possible that video is now easy to fake.
Everyone knows that a still image can be altered to (convincingly) depict something that never happened. So, a still image is not considered good evidence of anything unless it has a verifiable provenance, chain of custody etc. Presumably that wasn't always the case, but now that photo editing tech is universally accessible, we all know we can't trust a still image unless its authenticity can be corroborated somehow.
The deepfake tech merely puts video into the same category of (un)trustworthiness. The potential for abuse depends on people's trust that video is always authentic. So the "solution" is simply to make it as widely-known as possible that video is now easy to fake.
The volume alone might be a problem. It takes some Photoshop skills to pull off an acceptable fake. If there's a turnkey website that can spit them out en masse, that's something different than having to actually hire a human to do it by hand.
Previously it took at least one CGI artist to convincingly fake video, probably several. This inherently limits how much of a problem it can be, because it doesn't scale. AI scales.
I mean- either deep learning AI automation is going to be important and useful, or it isn't. If replacing all drivers with robots is important, then automated turnkey fakery has the potential for disrupting something, isn't it?
Previously it took at least one CGI artist to convincingly fake video, probably several. This inherently limits how much of a problem it can be, because it doesn't scale. AI scales.
I mean- either deep learning AI automation is going to be important and useful, or it isn't. If replacing all drivers with robots is important, then automated turnkey fakery has the potential for disrupting something, isn't it?
I agree, but I think my original point covers this - if video proves to be very easy to fake at scale (e.g. using your example of a turnkey website) then that should result in equally large-scale scepticism about video as evidence. The internet may drown in annoying deepfake-based memes but as long as everyone knows its all fake, there seems little potential for the kind of serious harm people are worried about (reputational damage, election meddling etc.)
> ...as long as everyone knows its all fake,
There's a shockingly large number of people who aren't even convinced that election meddling took place in 2016, or that propaganda was disseminated to many people on social media, despite unanimity from US intelligence.
If we as a society can't all agree that these things even happened, how can we hope to properly educate people on the existence/prevalence of fake video? It seems like common sense to many people, but we can't assume that everyone will accept these truths based on the political rhetoric we've seen in the last few years.
There's a shockingly large number of people who aren't even convinced that election meddling took place in 2016, or that propaganda was disseminated to many people on social media, despite unanimity from US intelligence.
If we as a society can't all agree that these things even happened, how can we hope to properly educate people on the existence/prevalence of fake video? It seems like common sense to many people, but we can't assume that everyone will accept these truths based on the political rhetoric we've seen in the last few years.
US intelligence doesn't enjoy a reputation for trustworthiness, to put it mildly. But if people can just go online, upload a video and get back a "hilarious" deepfake, that's an irrefutable demonstration that video-meddling is easy and widely-available, isn't it? They can literally see for themselves how accessible the faking tech is.
Text can be convincingly faked at scale. Most meme images are widely reused photos. We do have Snopes and other fact-checkers, but it's only a partial solution.
And yet, fake news does seem to be a problem. Checking provenance of facts and statistics is often skipped, even by journalists, let alone on Twitter.
This suggests that people will have lots of fun resharing deep fakes and won't care much that they're fake, as long as they express some emotion that they agree with.
Give people a fake that they want to believe in, and it's going to be very hard to talk them out of it.
And yet, fake news does seem to be a problem. Checking provenance of facts and statistics is often skipped, even by journalists, let alone on Twitter.
This suggests that people will have lots of fun resharing deep fakes and won't care much that they're fake, as long as they express some emotion that they agree with.
Give people a fake that they want to believe in, and it's going to be very hard to talk them out of it.
I would think that the same tech you can use to graft a face onto a person in a video could be used to do it on a still.
This is a good point, I hadn't really thought about it but the credibility of photos has cratered in the past decade.
Deepfakes' destruction of the credibility of videos is still worse because it totally removes the ability of a random citizen witness to capture evidence. This has been useful in the past, e.g. for documenting police brutality or just-developing events like shootings.
In a way this is a very undemocratic development -- putting the power of deepfakes in the hands of ordinary people is going to make everybody a less credible witness, no?
Deepfakes' destruction of the credibility of videos is still worse because it totally removes the ability of a random citizen witness to capture evidence. This has been useful in the past, e.g. for documenting police brutality or just-developing events like shootings.
In a way this is a very undemocratic development -- putting the power of deepfakes in the hands of ordinary people is going to make everybody a less credible witness, no?
> it totally removes the ability of a random citizen witness to capture evidence
The police/etc have the same problem.
> putting the power of deepfakes in the hands of ordinary people is going to make everybody a less credible witness, no?
"Ordinary people" have a major advantage: parallelism and redundancy. Making one fake and disseminating it to many people is efficient and cheap. Faking many videos in a way that avoids easily discovered contradictions is very hard. Evidence always needs to be corroborated.
The police/etc have the same problem.
> putting the power of deepfakes in the hands of ordinary people is going to make everybody a less credible witness, no?
"Ordinary people" have a major advantage: parallelism and redundancy. Making one fake and disseminating it to many people is efficient and cheap. Faking many videos in a way that avoids easily discovered contradictions is very hard. Evidence always needs to be corroborated.
This aspect is what scares me the most. Nowadays evidence can be easily fabricated and everybody has reason to be a skeptic.
The whole Cambridge Analytica debacle started blowing up after deepfakes gained notoriety and started getting banned on most sites. The whole time I was watching the undercover documentary Channel 4 released I kept thinking, "this 'found footage' could easily be a hoax"
The whole Cambridge Analytica debacle started blowing up after deepfakes gained notoriety and started getting banned on most sites. The whole time I was watching the undercover documentary Channel 4 released I kept thinking, "this 'found footage' could easily be a hoax"
The problem isn't so much that fake videos will be used to lie. It's that valid video evidence can be dismissed as Fake News with some credibility. This could be bad for the overall definition of "truth".
Video of the Prime Minister/President taking bribes? Eh, you can't trust these videos these days!
Video of the Prime Minister/President taking bribes? Eh, you can't trust these videos these days!
In the court of public opinion, yes, this is true - video is no longer proof that something happened. I guess that's a price we pay for technological progress. Presumably at some point it will be possible (and easy and accessible) to generate body fluids with someone else's DNA in them, at which point DNA evidence will suffer a similar hit.
In a court of law, presumably video will now be subject to the same scrutiny as photos. IANAL but I imagine photos do not "stand alone" - the side that uses them has to make a convincing argument that they are trustworthy.
In a court of law, presumably video will now be subject to the same scrutiny as photos. IANAL but I imagine photos do not "stand alone" - the side that uses them has to make a convincing argument that they are trustworthy.
Right. Evidence is more than a singular "smoking gun" photo or video. You typically rely on a whole collection of corroborating evidence to build a case.
It's the court of public opinion that worries me. That court is very important to the functioning of a liberal democracy. If the facts themselves are always open to suspicion, a society cannot defend itself very well against tyranny.
It's the court of public opinion that worries me. That court is very important to the functioning of a liberal democracy. If the facts themselves are always open to suspicion, a society cannot defend itself very well against tyranny.
I'd have to agree. In fact, I'm actually glad to see some pushback against the seemingly indelible veracity of photographic imagery.
Photos, and by corollary video, haven't been incontrovertible for at least two decades, and Hollywood movies are a clear demonstration of that fact.
We won't really be able to rely on pictures as proof, at some point in the immediate future.
Unfortunately, in an ever-more terrifying far-flung future, where eye surgery becomes sufficiently advanced, we won't even be able to trust our eyes. After that, I think it's probably just game over.
I really just don't have a strategy to countermand that one.
Photos, and by corollary video, haven't been incontrovertible for at least two decades, and Hollywood movies are a clear demonstration of that fact.
We won't really be able to rely on pictures as proof, at some point in the immediate future.
Unfortunately, in an ever-more terrifying far-flung future, where eye surgery becomes sufficiently advanced, we won't even be able to trust our eyes. After that, I think it's probably just game over.
I really just don't have a strategy to countermand that one.
I think the pictures-as-proof is a straw man. There are a lot of people that believe what they see if it reinforces their existing beliefs. If you make videos of Trump saying something bad, people on the left will believe it, even if the provenance is weak, and people on the right will be inclined to disbelief. A similar fake video with Obama or Clinton will have an opposite effect. Much of that effect can be had without any provenance at all due to the general ability of videos to circulate, usually though social media, with little to no real “authoritative source” to validate them.
I think the general public is learning how to be sceptical, albeit slowly. It used to be the case that merely being published counted as authority (I remember reading about UFO abductions and thinking "this is a real book! There must be some truth to it!" In my defence I was eight years old) but the internet is forcing everyone to be less naive.
That being said, movements like the anti-vaxxers and the flat-Earthers are testament to people's ability to believe whatever the hell they want.
That being said, movements like the anti-vaxxers and the flat-Earthers are testament to people's ability to believe whatever the hell they want.
I think your faith in the public to be discerning is hopelessly naive. The evidence is all around us that people just don’t care. You don’t even need to photoshop images anymore, just write down a few specially-crafted words and people just run with it. Altered images go largely undetected by the vast majority of people, and video will be even worse. Video just has a truth to it way more than any other medium.
I'd be more concerned with US officials using this technology to indict innocent people who disagree with them. Being able to conjure up a confession for anything by anyone is extremely powerful, given that the alternatives to accomplish the same thing today are basically apprehension and torture/threats.
>Being able to conjure up a confession for anything by anyone is extremely powerful
Being able to dismiss credible video evidence as 'deepfake' is equally powerful.
In any case, it would be extremely risky to hang a case on a single confession video that the accused claims is fake, given the current pattern of prosecution the DOJ would never bring that case; it would be embarrassing in the public eye and probably overturned on appeal, if it even made it to trial.
Being able to dismiss credible video evidence as 'deepfake' is equally powerful.
In any case, it would be extremely risky to hang a case on a single confession video that the accused claims is fake, given the current pattern of prosecution the DOJ would never bring that case; it would be embarrassing in the public eye and probably overturned on appeal, if it even made it to trial.
The bigger risk would be PR types where there is no court and prosecuted. For example, the Clippers were forcibly sold after the owner-Donald Sterling[0] was outed as a racist. A few fake videos like that would have high impact and wouldn’t need to go through court.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling
I agree, but would-be fakers should be deterred by the airtight defamation case that would cost them millions. That is, of course, if the plaintiffs can prove the video is in fact, fake.
I think it’s actually hard to launch such a case. I mean take Sterling. The tape was illegally leaked and was there a defamation suit against the leaker? California requires dual consent for recording [0], and no criminal charges have been brought or civil charges. Not the same, but shows there’s no repurcussion in this type of situation.
The issue is that it will be really hard to prove as fake so even if an adversary didn’t just anonymously leak the material. In a PR situation you don’t need authenticity, just confusion.
I expect that you could use this pretty effectively for stock scams (eg, video posted on Friday that Bezos is launching electric car tanks Tesla, etc). Or even more sinister fake videos of things that may be true (video of Musk assaulting some woman).
What I’m actually scanning for are small markets with small $10-100k upside potential like a fake video of Tom Cruise that impact Mission Impossible opening that can be shorted through mediapredict or other markets that aren’t SEC regulated.
Not to do it of course, but to see trends in how these videos are developed.
[0] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law
The issue is that it will be really hard to prove as fake so even if an adversary didn’t just anonymously leak the material. In a PR situation you don’t need authenticity, just confusion.
I expect that you could use this pretty effectively for stock scams (eg, video posted on Friday that Bezos is launching electric car tanks Tesla, etc). Or even more sinister fake videos of things that may be true (video of Musk assaulting some woman).
What I’m actually scanning for are small markets with small $10-100k upside potential like a fake video of Tom Cruise that impact Mission Impossible opening that can be shorted through mediapredict or other markets that aren’t SEC regulated.
Not to do it of course, but to see trends in how these videos are developed.
[0] http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law
Garry Kasparov has often accused V. Putin of maintaining his public influence by successfully attacking the idea that a verifiable truth can be established about his/oligarchical misdeeds. Surely, there are techniques to make educated assessments about the probability that [this] happened rather than [that] - but the public at large is neither literate in statistics nor receptive to uncertainty.
That's my view as well. In a time of information overload especially, people seem to be far more concerned in simply ending uncertainty, than validating the answer that precipitates that certainty. I believe this is referred to as the firehose model of propoganda. It effectively normalizes tu quoque fallacies, as the people whole have taken on a new set of facts are completely unprepared to debate the merits of those facts, and instead fallback to defending their newfound certainty.
Never thought of that angle. Now a strong social system would be resilient to either such attacks at large. Either by passing new laws, having crypto signed recording devices, strong judiciary etc for personal allegations. For the broad political discourse a robust societal framework would rebuff a lot of foreign attacks by their foreigners. Alas I’m not sure the US currently is in such a healthy state. You have to know and communicate with your neighbors for that.
That's an interesting application. With skepticism spreading about many forensic tools like fingerprints, burn analysis, bite analysis, etc. the confession has stayed the ultimate indicator of guilt to most of the public. I wonder if we may be entering another era of 'reasonable doubt'.
Any "solution" to this that relies on crypto/signing will fail. Propagandists will just make their fake videos and then record them off of a computer monitor and claim that they're a whistleblower "leaking" the video from an internal system they can't otherwise access.
I don't really think reputation has a better chance of solving this either, people are all-too-happy to believe anything that confirms their personal beliefs and ignore whatever contradicts them regardless of source.
It's interesting that a lot of the comments here look at how to prove a certain video is real (and assume that people will accept that any video without a certain trait is fake) rather than proving directly that a certain video is fake.
I don't really think reputation has a better chance of solving this either, people are all-too-happy to believe anything that confirms their personal beliefs and ignore whatever contradicts them regardless of source.
It's interesting that a lot of the comments here look at how to prove a certain video is real (and assume that people will accept that any video without a certain trait is fake) rather than proving directly that a certain video is fake.
It's not a totally lost cause — I wrote a piece on what we can do about this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/...
It's a first step, and my thinking has also evolved since—expect more updates in this space soon.
It's a first step, and my thinking has also evolved since—expect more updates in this space soon.
From this article:
> AI researchers and platform technologists need similar in-house or third-party societal impact review boards to help them evaluate the potential unintended consequences of their work.
As a machine learning researcher myself (albeit one who is probably unlikely to run afoul of one of these boards), this suggestion for research gives me pause. In the context of deepfakes, are you suggesting that it would have been more prudent to stop the research that made it possible before it had a chance to do so? This seems like a good way to ensure that less scrupulous parties harness destructive technologies before more scrupulous parties (the kind who'd adopt review boards).
I imagine this debate to some extent has already played out with nuclear weapons and bioweapons. I'm much less familiar with these two spheres, but as I recall research continued in both.
> AI researchers and platform technologists need similar in-house or third-party societal impact review boards to help them evaluate the potential unintended consequences of their work.
As a machine learning researcher myself (albeit one who is probably unlikely to run afoul of one of these boards), this suggestion for research gives me pause. In the context of deepfakes, are you suggesting that it would have been more prudent to stop the research that made it possible before it had a chance to do so? This seems like a good way to ensure that less scrupulous parties harness destructive technologies before more scrupulous parties (the kind who'd adopt review boards).
I imagine this debate to some extent has already played out with nuclear weapons and bioweapons. I'm much less familiar with these two spheres, but as I recall research continued in both.
Lots of details to be worked out, but yes there are models in other fields. You bring up a real concern and there are ways to address it.
I'm not suggesting stopping research on this. But the way in which that research is communicated, what the focus is, and the way which particular sorts of replication is enabled or discouraged has an impact.
An example that the HN crowd likely knows better is vulnerability/exploit disclosure. There are good ways to do it and harmful ways to do it.
You can perhaps think about deepfakes as an exploit for the human sensors/cognition that handle authentication.
I'm not suggesting stopping research on this. But the way in which that research is communicated, what the focus is, and the way which particular sorts of replication is enabled or discouraged has an impact.
An example that the HN crowd likely knows better is vulnerability/exploit disclosure. There are good ways to do it and harmful ways to do it.
You can perhaps think about deepfakes as an exploit for the human sensors/cognition that handle authentication.
Anyone know where deepfakes moved to? It was great seeing what was going on in /r/deepfakes but due to the "offensive nature" of some of the videos that subreddit was killed. Anyone know the best place to watch and observe the latest happenings in the scene?
Good question, I was just waiting for the all Nicolas Cage version of LotR
It’s a bit of a pain to follow progress without the subreddit, but progress is still being made- https://youtu.be/QhxTTshL3b0
When this happens (not if), I expect it will play right into the current administration's habit of dismissing anything that disagrees as fake news. For the administration that follows? Who knows? I only have evidence for right now.
I do think most of it will come from people lower down the political food chain (the meme creators, etc) who seek to convince others of their POV out of desperation and/or maliciousness.
I do think most of it will come from people lower down the political food chain (the meme creators, etc) who seek to convince others of their POV out of desperation and/or maliciousness.
As a filmmaker I am both in awe and horrified with this.
Some of these techniques can be used to make fixes in motion picture where it would be far too expensive to reshoot.
But there is the opposite where this technology can be used to falsify a video that can potentially be used to make false confessions or change what a person said for nefarious purposes.
Welcome to the world of what was once thought to be science fiction.
Some of these techniques can be used to make fixes in motion picture where it would be far too expensive to reshoot.
But there is the opposite where this technology can be used to falsify a video that can potentially be used to make false confessions or change what a person said for nefarious purposes.
Welcome to the world of what was once thought to be science fiction.
Will FB, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks create tools to flag deepfakes? It wouldn't solve the problem, but at least it could blunt the spread.
It could also raise awareness of the issue, so that if people see a video that seems "too good to be true" on a different platform, they would know that it might not be real.
It could also raise awareness of the issue, so that if people see a video that seems "too good to be true" on a different platform, they would know that it might not be real.
Inevitably you'll hear cries of censorship with varying degrees of veracity.
I would think that there'd be enough deepfakes on both sides that everyone would recognize that iff there are tools that accurately detect deepfakes, it would be useful to have them enabled on social networks. They don't need to censor the videos — just flag them as having deepfake characteristics.
Like when Facebook (briefly) tagged articles from certain sources as being disreputable and it led to an _increase_ in clicks to those articles?
People will believe what they want to believe. We're also seeing that they don't like mega corps acting as arbiters of truth. So, I'm not sure what, if any, effect this moderation/curation effort would have.
People will believe what they want to believe. We're also seeing that they don't like mega corps acting as arbiters of truth. So, I'm not sure what, if any, effect this moderation/curation effort would have.
I think what we really need is an embarrassing term for "someone who was fooled by a deepfake" (like "catfish"), so that there will be a social stigma that incentivizes people to not be tricked by them.
I don't currently have any better ideas that "getting deepfaked". Suggestions?
I don't currently have any better ideas that "getting deepfaked". Suggestions?
A crucial thing will be to detect these videos as they appear just like it is possible to detect Photoshoped material
You should never trust digital media.
You should be extremely selective about what analog media you trust.
If you weren't there to see it happen yourself, all you've got to go on is somebody else's perception. Be careful who you trust.
You should be extremely selective about what analog media you trust.
If you weren't there to see it happen yourself, all you've got to go on is somebody else's perception. Be careful who you trust.
As a filmmaker I feel that completely distrusting a medium just because it is digital might be a little harsh.
I think that we may want to consider using cryptographic signature methods as a way to mark materials as coming from the source they claim to be from. Though this is not a perfect solution.
Though I still work with analog film, though it is becoming more and more cost prohibitive everyday. Analog can just as easily be altered. If you looked at a silver gelatin print, if the printmaker was talented you probably would never be able to detect the changes to the image that were made during the printing process. Is the resulting image a fake, or is it just an artists vision?
I think that we may want to consider using cryptographic signature methods as a way to mark materials as coming from the source they claim to be from. Though this is not a perfect solution.
Though I still work with analog film, though it is becoming more and more cost prohibitive everyday. Analog can just as easily be altered. If you looked at a silver gelatin print, if the printmaker was talented you probably would never be able to detect the changes to the image that were made during the printing process. Is the resulting image a fake, or is it just an artists vision?
I bring you no solutions. Our best programmatic tool for these kinds of video analysis is currently the exact same technology that enables it in the first place. Furthermore, any neural network that can detect fake videos will only be used adversarially to train a better deep fake creator!
The only solution I see is the camera somehow cryptographically signing the video, and enabling users to easily check whether the signature is valid. However I don't think this is feasible, due to the amount of cooperation we'd need between camera makers and video distribution platforms, especially since it's not really in the businesses direct line of best interest help.
The world's going to start getting real surreal.