I wonder what this implies for the future of media (audio, photos, video) in general? Do we only consume media that has been signed by the creator and verified by an authority that we trust, e.g., a "blue checkmark" for media? Do we know how effective the SSL certificate verification has been in browsers at influencing consumer behavior?
In Neal Stephenson's latest book, that seems to be how he gets around the fake news problem.
The near future world signs everything with a personal identifier so they can prove they what people are seeing is genuine.
I imagine these identifiers could be extended to things like security cameras and things too so that there could be some verification that the video footage hasn't been doctored.
All of this of course relies on the general public getting the knowledge and tools to seamlessly do this verification on a daily basis. In the book it's mostly taken care of using google glass style wearables.
We do know that people don't care about trust indicators. They care about warnings for danger, but they don't care about trust indicators. Trust indicators are essentially, something for companies to sell.
Because everybody isn't going to pay for the trust indicator and we're going to consume plenty of things that don't have it, the indicator is basically just noise. It's why EV failed and we're about to see it repeat with this BIMI technology in the email world IMO.
On the other hand, if you get a big giant danger warning that stands out because everything else doesn't have it...it gets attention.
It’s gonna have to be better than a blue check mark.
A blue check mark only says this account/person has our imprimatur. Nothing more.
There are people who don’t have who are better disseminators than those who have them.
That would be terrible. Basically it would turn media into versions of Xinhua or former Pravda. Only approved voices and opinions get the “authenticity” mark.
The ability to fake photos has been around for a while and it hasn't been a big deal. People overall have proven savvy enough to mostly discern real from faked. My prediction is that the same will be true for ML faked videos.
Photo editing became "household" at least a decade ago. So if you think of that, I can't see why the perception of video's in 3 years would be different than photo's today.
Video evidence is going to be inadmissible very soon.
It's ironic that we're essentially being pushed back to a pre-technology, pre-media time. "If you didn't see it with your own two eyes, you can't believe it"
Video evidence has always required testimony to its provenance, hasn't it? Otherwise it can be removed as hearsay. Courts have always been worried about authenticating evidence including video.
A little story of admission of evidence I heard from a friend of my wife when I gave her ride home recently.
We listened to Sirius 117 thru our ride and they always tell crime stories. It was a death row story and when the narrator said that the only evidence they had against a suspect was a DNA but it was enough to put him on electric chair, she chuckled a little. It was odd so I asked her why. As a court reporter she witnessed many horrors written by life, but this one was particularly scary for another reason. She was reporting on a case where the only evidence of a murder was a DNA, even though a suspect was in New York on a day where victim was murdered in Los Angeles. The DA rested case explaining that DNA evidence is enough and holds up in courts for many years and that they do not need to explain anything else, how he go from NY to LA at the night of murder or really nothing else mattered "because of DNA." So defended lawyers ran a suspect DNA via one of popular DNA-kit websites and to their surprise they found a good enough match. She was lucky to be called in when the case was heard again (most of the time different court reporter would be called in depending of availability) and they showed that result to DA/prosecutors asking if they would consider prosecuting based on that person DNA. They look at it and said it was the same person DNA. So defended lawyers revealed that it was different person. To judge shock, then DA came to say that DNA match doesn't have to be 100% and over the span of human existence some 100 billion people lived so its quite possible for extremely similar DNA to be found in wild. She recalls looking at judge face at that moment and he turned pale blue - you couldn't help to see this man wondering if over the span of last 2 decades, he may have sentenced hundreds of people based on inadequate evidence. The case did not ended there but shortly after when she was checking on it, the whole case all of sudden got sealed and even year later was still locked down. All she knows is that most likely he wasn't found guilty, as checking on his name recently did not yield any record on Cali's death row list.
An interesting use could be to anonymise people in public videos. You could use randomly generated faces (which other emerging tech can produce) and effectively remove peoples recognizable features by "replacing" them.
Storytelling of historical characters where we have common knowledge of what they looked like (e.g. Einstein).
Reshooting scenes of movies without having to get key actors back on location.
Immersive storytelling where you get to be placed inside a movie.
Actor safety where they can go through transformations for a shoot, such as extreme weight loss or weight gain.
I can really only think of it in terms of entertainment. There may be some therapy benefits which are yet to get discovered, but I would imagine that's a whole new level of complexity.
“Joke” apps, so you can put yourself in a video as a hero heroine, villain villainess. Put yourself as a singer or whatever on a music video, etc.
Punking your friends too.
In a productive context in filmmaking you can have fun with doubles and stuntmen and stunt women. Or if you have the rights to license the face and likeness of an actor actress and they can be in five films, ten films in a year (forgetting about brand dilution). John Wayne can be in a new Western movie,
Famous actors could license their face for use. This could even last past their death, allowing them to star in movies decades after their flesh death.
If an actor dies while filming a movie, it can be required in the contract that they allow their face to be generated for scenes that haven't been filmed yet.
They could also use this to use a younger face as they age.
I see a lot of concern regarding fake pornographic videos. And I get it. But on the other hand, people could release videos they do not want to appear in with a credible alternative to blurring faces (though I guess you could still fingerprint facial expressions).
If this gets mainstream enough, "revenge porn" would also lose a lot of its current value, being easily dismissible as "fake". (And so would genuine photographical evidence...)
Journalists could use it to hide their sources from the public. If this gets reaaly good, it would become a nice alternative to motion capture for cinematography (pose estimation, including facial expressions). Then swap in the 3D model, or concept art of the person you want to appear on screen. Significantly reduce the costs for makeup, and enable more in post-prod. That was probably already available for big teams with big budgets, but this makes it more mainstream.
I recently watched a Deep Fake video of The Shining with Jim Carrey's face over Jack Nicholson's. It was so damn good you couldn't even tell it wasn't actually him playing the role. This was all fun and games, but one thing that immediately comes to mind is movies staring people who are no longer alive.
Privacy. A commercial video shot in public today is usually required to blur faces of people who didn't give explicit consent. Replacing faces with stubs is a nice alternative, as long as the target face is from a person with a consent.
On a network like FB that has your photos, mix your own face into the advertisement! The video can have the pre-computed target, and the network can generate yours from all that free photo storage/tagging...
As a part of a pro movie making suite like AfterEffects or DaVinci Resolve - you can take somebody else to act in a scene and then replace with physique of your chosen actor, e.g. you do stunts, your actor can't appear at a given geographic location at a given time, somebody had a facial injury/scars you want to get rid of etc. Plenty of valid uses. Then you could e.g. do a render in Blender and replace "avatars" with real human faces, avoiding "uncanny valley" in your animation.
Travel industry can have uses as well - these days many places offer video recordings of their clients doing some dangerous activity; for those that can't do them yet still want the video they could offer pre-baked scenes where taking a selfie could kill somebody and then replace their face/body with some green screen footage of their client using this app and some pose estimator/body switcher. Or just show you how much would you enjoy some beach property in some hot location with a video featuring you etc. This would make it useful for custom ads featuring you as well.
Localisation of films\tv shows\educational material.
Often English language films are poorly dubbed for local (mostly non-English speaking) markets. Having a local/recognisable actor filling the role would be a big improvment.
Celebrities could sell the 'rights' to their faces and then ordinary people could 'act' in commercials and later on even movies and then just stick the face of the celebrities?! xD Celebrities will become cheaply available to 'star' in your next Netflix series.
(But unfortunately, even if celebrities don't sell their faces, they'll be stolen!)
Deep analysis of the body for any visible signs of tumors or diseases. Stroke detection software. Home and car entry without needing to carry any keys. Much faster entry into airports, where we need passports or security checks anyway. Lots of entertainment possibilities.
Agree that this feels like a tool for malicious intent.
But, maybe reviving dead celebrities or family members?
Either way this tech seems inevitable, nerds showing off their skills to other nerds.
Next question: does it make CCTV footage obsolete as a form of permissible evidence in court?
This technology has been posted on HN before and the comments were all too similar to this one. I understand why a lot of people are falling into the FUD-hole, but we can pretty easily solve the issues mentioned in the comments by inserting a digital key - similar to a SSL certificate, into an image/video upon initial upload. Or even upon creation, maybe using some sort of ledger to verify integrity. I'm not too worried.
On a (somewhat) related note, I'm working on face recognition with homomorphic encryption, therefore without compromising the user privacy. The bold goal is the first privacy preserving videocamera. If you find this interesting, I would love to chat about it.
I'm surprised no one's bringing up the precedent of photoshop. For years we've culturally realized that pictures may not tell the whole story, and this is the exact same, down to results that can't quite escape the uncanny valley.
Researchers and prototyping engineers generally don't seem concerned with ethics or consequences these days. Hard to be sure whether it's due to a pressure to publish or interest in chasing fame/revenue but there's lots of stuff like this being published lately. Even if some researchers opted not to chase this down there are always more people looking to push the boundaries.
The natural conclusion goes past revenge porn to revenge videos of beheadings, murders, etc that can be sent to friends or family members who aren't technically savvy enough to recognize fakes for what they are. Not to mention the existing phenomenon of blaming random civilians for murders and terror attacks - this will be far more convincing when it's paired with convincing fakes. It'll probably claim some lives.
[+] [-] localhost|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RandallBrown|6 years ago|reply
The near future world signs everything with a personal identifier so they can prove they what people are seeing is genuine.
I imagine these identifiers could be extended to things like security cameras and things too so that there could be some verification that the video footage hasn't been doctored.
All of this of course relies on the general public getting the knowledge and tools to seamlessly do this verification on a daily basis. In the book it's mostly taken care of using google glass style wearables.
[+] [-] brightball|6 years ago|reply
Because everybody isn't going to pay for the trust indicator and we're going to consume plenty of things that don't have it, the indicator is basically just noise. It's why EV failed and we're about to see it repeat with this BIMI technology in the email world IMO.
On the other hand, if you get a big giant danger warning that stands out because everything else doesn't have it...it gets attention.
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
A blue check mark only says this account/person has our imprimatur. Nothing more.
There are people who don’t have who are better disseminators than those who have them.
That would be terrible. Basically it would turn media into versions of Xinhua or former Pravda. Only approved voices and opinions get the “authenticity” mark.
[+] [-] wuliwong|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plopz|6 years ago|reply
Considering how EV is essentially dead, I would assume it hasn't been very effective.
[+] [-] koonsolo|6 years ago|reply
Photo editing became "household" at least a decade ago. So if you think of that, I can't see why the perception of video's in 3 years would be different than photo's today.
[+] [-] ur-whale|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] puranjay|6 years ago|reply
It's ironic that we're essentially being pushed back to a pre-technology, pre-media time. "If you didn't see it with your own two eyes, you can't believe it"
[+] [-] roywiggins|6 years ago|reply
https://jamespublishing.com/2013/objecting-video-audio-evide...
https://www.esquiresolutions.com/federal-rules-catch-digital...
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|6 years ago|reply
Given what we know of human memory and visual processing, you'd be a damned fool to trust your own eyes any better.
[+] [-] vectorEQ|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joering2|6 years ago|reply
We listened to Sirius 117 thru our ride and they always tell crime stories. It was a death row story and when the narrator said that the only evidence they had against a suspect was a DNA but it was enough to put him on electric chair, she chuckled a little. It was odd so I asked her why. As a court reporter she witnessed many horrors written by life, but this one was particularly scary for another reason. She was reporting on a case where the only evidence of a murder was a DNA, even though a suspect was in New York on a day where victim was murdered in Los Angeles. The DA rested case explaining that DNA evidence is enough and holds up in courts for many years and that they do not need to explain anything else, how he go from NY to LA at the night of murder or really nothing else mattered "because of DNA." So defended lawyers ran a suspect DNA via one of popular DNA-kit websites and to their surprise they found a good enough match. She was lucky to be called in when the case was heard again (most of the time different court reporter would be called in depending of availability) and they showed that result to DA/prosecutors asking if they would consider prosecuting based on that person DNA. They look at it and said it was the same person DNA. So defended lawyers revealed that it was different person. To judge shock, then DA came to say that DNA match doesn't have to be 100% and over the span of human existence some 100 billion people lived so its quite possible for extremely similar DNA to be found in wild. She recalls looking at judge face at that moment and he turned pale blue - you couldn't help to see this man wondering if over the span of last 2 decades, he may have sentenced hundreds of people based on inadequate evidence. The case did not ended there but shortly after when she was checking on it, the whole case all of sudden got sealed and even year later was still locked down. All she knows is that most likely he wasn't found guilty, as checking on his name recently did not yield any record on Cali's death row list.
So so much of DNA being of 100% proof.
[+] [-] randyrand|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikojan|6 years ago|reply
Nothing changes.
[+] [-] CabSauce|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] costcopizza|6 years ago|reply
Fake news on high octane race gas.
[+] [-] luiscosio|6 years ago|reply
https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap
With a big development community and interesting results.
[+] [-] s_Hogg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DMcVeigh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martin-adams|6 years ago|reply
Reshooting scenes of movies without having to get key actors back on location.
Immersive storytelling where you get to be placed inside a movie.
Actor safety where they can go through transformations for a shoot, such as extreme weight loss or weight gain.
I can really only think of it in terms of entertainment. There may be some therapy benefits which are yet to get discovered, but I would imagine that's a whole new level of complexity.
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
Punking your friends too.
In a productive context in filmmaking you can have fun with doubles and stuntmen and stunt women. Or if you have the rights to license the face and likeness of an actor actress and they can be in five films, ten films in a year (forgetting about brand dilution). John Wayne can be in a new Western movie,
[+] [-] scarmig|6 years ago|reply
If an actor dies while filming a movie, it can be required in the contract that they allow their face to be generated for scenes that haven't been filmed yet.
They could also use this to use a younger face as they age.
[+] [-] amq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MayeulC|6 years ago|reply
If this gets mainstream enough, "revenge porn" would also lose a lot of its current value, being easily dismissible as "fake". (And so would genuine photographical evidence...)
Journalists could use it to hide their sources from the public. If this gets reaaly good, it would become a nice alternative to motion capture for cinematography (pose estimation, including facial expressions). Then swap in the 3D model, or concept art of the person you want to appear on screen. Significantly reduce the costs for makeup, and enable more in post-prod. That was probably already available for big teams with big budgets, but this makes it more mainstream.
[+] [-] sakopov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krasin|6 years ago|reply
I am not a lawyer, though.
[+] [-] derivagral|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] craigsmansion|6 years ago|reply
1. including "Face off"
[+] [-] bitL|6 years ago|reply
Travel industry can have uses as well - these days many places offer video recordings of their clients doing some dangerous activity; for those that can't do them yet still want the video they could offer pre-baked scenes where taking a selfie could kill somebody and then replace their face/body with some green screen footage of their client using this app and some pose estimator/body switcher. Or just show you how much would you enjoy some beach property in some hot location with a video featuring you etc. This would make it useful for custom ads featuring you as well.
[+] [-] mkr-hn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] divbyzer0|6 years ago|reply
Often English language films are poorly dubbed for local (mostly non-English speaking) markets. Having a local/recognisable actor filling the role would be a big improvment.
[+] [-] rohan_shah|6 years ago|reply
Celebrities could sell the 'rights' to their faces and then ordinary people could 'act' in commercials and later on even movies and then just stick the face of the celebrities?! xD Celebrities will become cheaply available to 'star' in your next Netflix series.
(But unfortunately, even if celebrities don't sell their faces, they'll be stolen!)
[+] [-] heeen|6 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/KH1V6CHO1Jk?list=PL84DB158CAABE4E07&t=388
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|6 years ago|reply
https://github.com/deepfakes/faceswap#faceswap-has-ethical-u...
[+] [-] wait-a-minute|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nelsonic|6 years ago|reply
Next question: does it make CCTV footage obsolete as a form of permissible evidence in court?
[+] [-] golergka|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boilerupnc|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.dezeen.com/2019/05/24/salvador-dali-deepfake-dal...
[EDITED]
[+] [-] Oras|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
As for the political implications, go watch "Wag the Dog" again.
[+] [-] jonnismash|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spaniard_dev|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topranks|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lorepieri|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gallerdude|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InfinityByTen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingadd|6 years ago|reply
The natural conclusion goes past revenge porn to revenge videos of beheadings, murders, etc that can be sent to friends or family members who aren't technically savvy enough to recognize fakes for what they are. Not to mention the existing phenomenon of blaming random civilians for murders and terror attacks - this will be far more convincing when it's paired with convincing fakes. It'll probably claim some lives.