
Nicolas Cage DeepFake - mariuz
http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/170154814961/nicolas-cage-deepfake-redditor-derpfakes-has
======
IIAOPSW
Combine this with that other group that machine learned to generate fake
celebrities.

Soon we'll be able to make 100% convincing movies without any real celebrities
whatsoever. Imagine a world of no celebrities. No TMZ. No gossip columns. No
infotainmant on the news. No faux outrage scandals.

 _sniff_ its beautiful isn't it.

~~~
krapp
>Imagine a world of no celebrities. No TMZ. No gossip columns. No infotainmant
on the news. No faux outrage scandals.

You'd still have all of those things, because those are all part of the
business that drives entertainment. The entire scandal complex would just be
automated and generated by AI along with the rest of consumer culture, but it
won't go away. Why would it, when there's so much money to be made?

There will be probably be _more_ of it, not less, because once you have
perfectly convincing virtual celebrities, you can include perfectly convincing
virtual _dead_ celebrities as well, and fictional characters within their
respective fictional worlds.

~~~
Udik
That reminds me of a definition I gave once of one of those tv series full of
mysteries and supernatural events that should all be explained by some
underlying reality that, alas, never existed even in the minds of the authors.

"Like a gossip magazine about non-existent people"

It seems that people would actually buy and read them avidly.

~~~
krapp
>It seems that people would actually buy and read them avidly.

They would. It's basically making an industry out of what already happens in
fandom.

------
tudorw
I get the feeling that a Cinema release before not too long will offer the
options to see it with whichever leading stars you fancy, and get re released
5 years later with updates...

~~~
amelius
This is happening with porn already. What I'm scared of is that people can
choose people they know in real life.

~~~
danellis
AIUI, people generally will not have the required tens (hundreds?) of
thousands of images of said person.

~~~
mabbo
That's less and less necessary, imho. I imagine pretty soon a person's
Facebook page will be enough data.

------
mattbierner
How long until advertisers get in on this? For example: imagine that Facebook
shows me a video of my friends and I having the time of our lives at a casino:
winning the jackpot, eating great food, relaxing by the pool, etc. It’s
entirely convincing but I, try and I might, I can’t remember when the trip
took place. That’s because the video was actuslly an ad for that casino
generated from our profile data

Or perhaps companies will start offering services that let you fake trips for
social media. For just $25, they create videos of you having the trip of a
lifetime anywhere in the world (basically a modern version of Mr. and Mrs.
Everywhere from Stand on Zanzibar)

~~~
amelius
On the other hand, the technique would allow people to post photos and videos
of themselves in exotic places, et cetera. Facebook's newsfeed would become so
fake, that nobody would believe it anymore.

I think the approach will grow old really quickly, and it will turn people
into (perhaps more healthy) skeptics.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
> I think the approach will grow old really quickly, and it will turn people
> into (perhaps more healthy) skeptics.

This frustrates me so. Why does everyone think technology will always
magically change human nature for the better?

People are not skeptics now, and they won't become skeptics once this tech
comes out.

Just like a large percentage of people believe whatever is put in their
Facebook feed, they will believe things that confirm their world view.

It's like saying "man once the internet becomes widespread there will no
longer be things like climate change denial because anyone will have access to
accurate information at their fingertips and can look up the data and
reports." And yet, look where we are in the US.

Technology will never solve problems of human nature.

Via analogy, let's say you saw it as a problem that people like kinky sex and
want it stopped. People have always liked kinky sex always will like it. There
is no tech you can invent shy of physical or chemical lobotomy that will
change that. But for some reason when we look at other qualities we forget
that lesson.

------
joezydeco
You know their eventual goal is to redo _The Lord of the Rings_ with an all-
Cage cast, right?

~~~
stryk
I would buy up all the tickets to that and give them away for free. That would
be something everyone should see and nobody should have to pay for.

------
fastball
Here[1] is the post history of the person who makes them on Reddit.

1\.
[https://www.reddit.com/user/derpfakes/posts/](https://www.reddit.com/user/derpfakes/posts/)

~~~
psyc
Note that this is a different user from the one who wrote the original code,
who in turn is a different user from the one who adapted it into a desktop GUI
app.

------
dharness
What is going on in this post? A couple Nick Cages and then 2 scenes of Star
Wars where on has a slightly different looking Leila?

Why does the text not simply explain what is going on?

~~~
half-kh-hacker
DeepFake is a technology primarily used for face-swapping stars of adult video
with well-known celebrities.

It's been gaining popularity on Reddit recently, and someone had the idea to
"replace all actors in every film with Nicholas Cage"

Seen here is a prototype.

------
SamBam
The Carrie Fisher example is quite amazing. It somehow manages to remove all
the plasticity of the original.

~~~
linkmotif
I don't understand that example. Either face recognition is off in my brain,
or both top and bottom look like Carrie Fisher. Am I missing something?

~~~
jobigoud
None of them are Carrie Fisher. Top one is CGI and is from the movie, bottom
one is another actress + deepfake. It's supposed to show that the deepfake one
is just as good as the Hollywood one.

~~~
stochastic_monk
So you're saying that is from one of the "new new" star wars movies, after
Carrie Fisher's death? [I live under a rock, sorry.]

~~~
dharmab
It's from Rogue One, which is set just before the original and thus needed a
double for young Carrie Fisher.

------
afpx
It’s only a matter of time until digital video comes with a cryptographic
signature combination of the device manufacturer and the author.

~~~
yorwba
The leakers will just claim that they had to remove watermarks to avoid being
traced, thus invalidating the signature.

Or if it isn't important who the author is, they can record a projection of a
fake video with a verified camera, giving the fake the appearance of
legitimacy.

~~~
afpx
All true, but it should at least move us toward a world where people will
assume all media is fake unless it’s been signed by an author.

------
kiernanmcgowan
I’m now eagerly waiting the “malkovich malkovich” scene from “Being John
Malkovich”, but with everyone replaced with Nick Cage.

[https://youtu.be/lIpev8JXJHQ](https://youtu.be/lIpev8JXJHQ)

------
Para2016
What if instead of Nick Cage and actresses on existing porn, the users put
their own faces/bodies on the porn actor's face and body? Would that be weird
and creepy or would it be more immersive for the user? Maybe it could even be
good enough to create artificial memories, especially if adobe voice
conversion technology was combined with it. Then you'd see and hear yourself
having sex with a porn star.

------
tw1010
More than any of the AlphaGo stuff, this is actually a way more convincing
example that all the deep learning stuff really isn't just hype.

~~~
hux_
Well lets just wait for Nicholas Cage or Disney or whoever to react. I'd be
surprised if Mr. Deepfake doesn't speed the rest of his life dealing with
lawyers if this goes anywhere.

~~~
tw1010
I have a hard time imagining how such a law could be enforced though.

------
IgorPartola
I actually downloaded the code that was used for this off GitHub and tried it
out. It is very simple, though I wish I could say I understood it better. I’d
love to see a more robust implementation of it to be able to produce better
looking results.

------
k__
Just saw a DeepFake thread on 4chan and I thought this was some pseudonym of a
fake-porn creator, but the quality was amazing. Im impressed to find such
hightech in porn, lol.

~~~
tudorw
porn has always led the way in media tech!

~~~
stryk
Yea I was going to mention that as well. Wasn't porn the deciding factor in
both 'format wars' (VHS vs. BetaMax as well as, years later, Blu-Ray vs.
HDDVD)?

~~~
ZenoArrow
I'd suggest it's not clear cut what role porn played in the VHS vs. BetaMax
format wars. People often bring up that BetaMax was the superior format, but
overlook that it was only the superior format in one regard (picture quality).
In other metrics, VHS was either the superior format (recording length) or
roughly equal (audio quality).

I'd also suggest there was also a key factor accelerating the growth of VHS
over Betamax, which was one of cost. VHS was supposedly cheaper than Betamax
at the launch of VHS, and the price difference would only have increased as
its market share grew and the effects of scaling up mass production were in
place.

~~~
cr0sh
IIRC, VHS was cheaper for the rental market. Beta format tapes had higher
licensing fees (or something like that), and brand new movies were extremely
expensive. Sony essentially controlled it.

VHS - with it's longer length (meaning more films could be distributed as a
single tape) and lower fees (the format was done by a consortium of
manufacturers - IIRC, Panasonic and JVC were the main drivers?) meant that
rental stores didn't have to pay so much for a film to rent out. At the time,
VHS movies cost around $100.00 per tape (I remember this well, because as a
kid parents made sure that they returned them properly and in good shape,
because the cost to buy a replacement tape was insane).

~~~
k__
lol, now everything makes sense.

I didn't really understand why renting films was a big deal back in the days,

~~~
stryk
Aw, dude! I'm assuming you're a little younger sorry if I'm off the mark,
video stores had a culture all their own that is just gone now, never to
return, and it's a shame. There was a certain magic about them that is just
lost with time now. They were everywhere - franchise chain stores
(Blockbuster, Family Video, Hollywood Video, etc.), as well as neighborhood
mom & pop shops [these could be hit or miss, but when you found a good one you
were virtually a lifetime customer]. Hell, you used to be able to rent tapes
at the grocery store! Even more important than that, they were a cultural and
societal staple. Everyone went to the video store; you met up with friends
there (some even had arcades in them!), you ran into people you hadn't seen in
a while there [this was before cell phones, so that mattered a _lot_ ], you
looked forward to going there on friday/saturday afternoon to rent a tape to
watch that night. It was a great way to discover new movies you hadn't heard
of before or obscure titles that didn't have budgets for TV or cinema ads --
this is why box art was important and distributors fought over retail/rental
shelf space. A lot of this stuff is all but irrelevant these days.

You have to keep in mind this was before everything went digital/streaming.
800x600 desktop resolution on your PC was considered higher end, so your
typical video file was something like 480x320 or less and the quality was crap
(think MPEG-1, old school QuickTime, and _gasp_ RealVideo). It didn't matter
much for movies anyway, there wasn't bandwidth or storage space like we have
now. I still remember the first time I saw a movie on DVD it was an honest
Holy Shit! moment. Sorta-high bitrate MPEG-2 with a good 5.1 surround sound
audio track on disc in your home was nothing short of revolutionary.

~~~
k__
Oh I'm not that young, haha.

I had these stores in my childhood, till I was 16 or something.

My mother even worked in one when I was smaller. They had billiard tables,
snacks and stuff there.

I always rented games for PSX back then, because one would cost 30-40€ and I
was a poor child, hehe.

Well, the stores were kinda like you said when I was in my teens, but it
seemed to me that not so many people were renting anymore. And yes they had
the expensive games, which was good for poor children, but the movies weren't
100€ a VHS for long time anymore, so most people probably simply bought them.

~~~
stryk
Same here, I was a NES then Sega Genesis (I think it was called the Master
System in your neck of the woods) kid and rented games all the time because my
parents didn't have money laying around to just buy every game I wanted -- in
the US new games back then were still $60, which years ago was a lot of money,
and still is (imho). Some were even more than that -- I distinctly remember
saving up allowances and lawn-mowing money for _months_ to buy the Star Wars
NES game from Sears, which costed $80. And it ended up being terrible. You
live & learn :)

My renting habits continued on through the Sega CD, PSX, and Sega Dreamcast
(what a great system this was, mainly because CD burners were becoming cheap
and you didn't need a hardware modification of your console to play burned
games -- yes, I pirated the hell out of them [hello #kalisto and #echelon from
EFnet] and this probably led to the console dying out long before it should
have but I was a kid below the legal working age I couldn't buy them even
though I wanted to.

------
billconan
which paper is behind deepfake?

~~~
psyc
The reddit user who wrote the script said it was at least loosely based on:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00848](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00848)

------
nkkollaw
I was too distracted by how unusable Tumbler is, though.

------
baxtr
I’m sure some idiot will come up with a plan to monetize this through an ICO.
Taking bets on this starting now

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, even when other people are
idiots. Especially then.

