
Experts: Spy used AI-generated face to connect with targets - NN88
https://www.apnews.com/bc2f19097a4c4fffaa00de6770b8a60d
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Lowkeyloki
At first, I thought this was going to be some "A Scanner Darkly" level stuff
done real-time over Skype or something. Turns out it's just using
thispersondoesnotexist.com to generate a profile pic for a website. I'd
expected bots to have picked up this trick by now.

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metaphor
Although admittedly ad hominem, I was instantly turned off by the article upon
learning Hao Li[1] was solicited to remark in his affiliate capacity with USC.

[1] [http://sadeghi.com/dr-iman-sadeghi-v-pinscreen-inc-et-
al/](http://sadeghi.com/dr-iman-sadeghi-v-pinscreen-inc-et-al/)

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craftinator
Question: why does it matter that the image was generated using ML? Seems to
be a main point of the article, but I really don't see why it matters based on
what was discussed in the article.

Software that does this automagically exists on GitHub, so any 13 year old
with a < 10 year old laptop could have made it. So the ability to generate
this image doesn't matter. A person could have changed a face into a new face
in Photoshop or GIMP, or just grabbed a random sample from the internet. So I
am a bit confused as to why it's even mentioned; it seems a pointless detail,
and even more so to appear so promiscuously in the headline.

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tomglynch
The reason it is important here is it increases the likelihood of the profile
being fake. If it was a real picture it may be someone lying to improve their
resume and get a better job. But if it's a spy, a generated image means it's
unique and not able to be reverse image searched.

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valiant-comma
Reminds me of Robin Sage[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Sage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Sage)

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HeWhoLurksLate
That was an interesting little read, thanks!

So in other news- social engineering is _still_ a huge threat to security,
because humans are humans. Wheee.

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mattnewport
If you're going to write an article whose primary topic is an image it would
be nice to include that image.

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nraynaud
[https://i.imgur.com/ddaY01b.png](https://i.imgur.com/ddaY01b.png) What kind
of browser do you have?

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TACIXAT
It's 2019, if your website doesn't support images in Lynx then it doesn't
deserve my business!

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taneq
<angrily typing response in Pine> :P

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nanopticon
Does anyone know why AI-based detection algorithms seem to have lagged behind
AI-based production of images? Perhaps that's just where the money is, but you
would think the DoD and other agencies would be at least equally interested in
detection.

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currymj
Could just be that this is often done using GANs? So if you come up with some
better way of telling apart real from fake, it can immediately be used as part
of the discriminator, resulting in (hopefully) even better fake images.

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david-gpu
> So if you come up with some better way of telling apart real from fake, it
> can immediately be used as part of the discriminator

The generator can only learn from the discriminator if the discriminator is
differentiable and has reasonably consistent gradients.

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bitL
You can use relaxation for discrete variables (e.g. by using convex simplex),
replacing them with differentiable variables, and then just discretize after
the very end of the computation. A common trick for variational autoencoders
that are another way to do generative models.

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toomuchlove
It will be really funny if this image turns out to be a real photo.

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julienreszka
Why would they reveal this

