
As fake videos become more realistic, seeing shouldn't always be believing - geekdidi
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-fake-videos-20180219-story.html
======
dreaming1234
> With more time, Pinscreen, the Los Angeles start-up behind the technology,
> believes its renderings will become so accurate they will defy reality.

Pinscreen is getting sued by their former VP of Engineering for faking their
results and for assault and battery [1].

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

~~~
dpwm
The linked piece is a surprisingly compelling read.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
There's something so refreshing about reading things in legal point form. No
fluff, easy to read fast, and no "life story before the recipe" type writing.

I wish more news articles were written with such brevity. I read pretty much
the whole thing with ease, whereas I would struggle to read an article the
quarter the length with all the fluff and irrelevant drivel added to most
articles these days.

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davidgh
My fear is less about people being “duped” by a fake video and more that fake
videos will serve as feedback loops for misguided or false beliefs that people
already “cherish” and “love”. Most will make little effort to research the
legitimacy of a video that agrees with their current beliefs, but those
beliefs will probably be strongly reinforced by fake videos.

~~~
acjohnson55
I don't think it matters. Those people are already in an intellectually closed
pocket universe. People overestimate the extent to which universal consensual
reality exists or has ever existed.

The first line of defense is education. Fundamentally, we have to make the
case for why we know what we know. This is why K-12 exists, although the
availability of effective primary and secondary education remains a major
issue.

The next line of defense is social interaction. Most people will have to leave
their bubbles to have any sort of upward mobility and ability to steer
society. There will always be cynical people who exploit constituencies of
deceived people to gain power, but many others eventually defect.

We have little reason to believe that this is a long-term equilibrium, but
it's the story of the past 500 years of history, ever since the printing press
created decentralized mass media.

~~~
exolymph
"Those people" indicates that the majority on this forum (including myself) is
part of the general dupe-susceptible population. That seems dubious to me.

Edit: *is not! I do think Hacker News readers are dupe-susceptible.

~~~
acjohnson55
Don't get me wrong, everyone is susceptible. I don't mean to talk down about
people. Everyone wants to confirm their own worldview.

But I do think a lot of people come to forums like this because they like
having their mind expanded and care about how we know what we know.

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Guest9812398
I think people overestimate the concern of fake videos. Consider photos for
comparison. There have been fake photos of well known people for decades
online, many of which are indistinguishable from reality. It doesn't lead to
much confusion or issues in our everyday life. We just assume every noteworthy
image is fake unless it comes from, or is cleared by, a credible source. The
same will apply to video.

~~~
jacobsheehy
> We just assume every noteworthy image is fake unless

Who is we? How do you know this? Citation needed. I think it is a very small
portion of the population who actively operates under this assumption for
photos. I would guess 5-15% but I don't know. Surely it is not most people
though, or everyone.

Just because you/your friends do something doesn't mean other people do, or
even most people do. I'd guess that for a great number of things that it would
often be the opposite for technical people; often the things we do are things
most people _don 't_ do.

I think people _underestimate_ the coming confusion from video.

> It doesn't lead to much confusion or issues in our everyday life.

I mean, I think it does. I think it leads to massive issues in society where
people don't know what is real or not without even knowing it. Magazine photos
of people are well-known to be touched-up at a minimum, but how many people in
a population actively think about that when the look at the cover?

I would posit that our society has been heavily damaged by the proliferation
of fake photos.

~~~
exolymph
Okay. Name a specific negative incident stemming from fake photos, off the top
of your heard. (No googling or otherwise searching for an example.)

~~~
jacobsheehy
That one tabloid that showed those fake, grossed out "images" of Hillary
during the last election cycle. Not linking the image because your requested
no links allowed. These were displayed by the millions at grocery store
checkouts across America for months leading up to the election. They portrayed
a sick, ill woman who looked like she was dying. Completely fake photo.

Next: Why did you ask for a specific 'incident' when I clearly described that
the problem is a general, societal problem that arises in specific instances
every single time someone looks at a photo that they think is real but isn't?
I could also cite a specific instance from earlier today when I saw a stack of
magazines at the store and felt like a slob in my normal clothes and non-
digital face and existence. Happens billions of times a day.

Edit: Since I really prefer to provide citations, I have since Googled for my
example to provide context for other readers. Rest assured I wrote out my
initial comment first.

[https://qz.com/1369399/david-peckers-national-enquirer-
ami-t...](https://qz.com/1369399/david-peckers-national-enquirer-ami-trashed-
hillary-clinton-to-help-trump/)

~~~
exolymph
I didn't say no links, I said you had to remember the incident off the top of
your head.

Also: 1) The Quartz link you provided does not say the photos are fake. 2)
"[N]egative incident stemming from fake photos" requires more than "fake photo
existed."

~~~
CamperBob2
The line between a completely made-up depiction and a real one isn't
necessarily the important one. The photos of Hillary Clinton were real enough,
but carefully selected and post-processed to make her look as unsympathetic as
possible.

Does a photo of a candidate scowling or sneering constitute a genuine
portrayal of their appearance and personality? If so, why not make that scowl
or sneer just a _bit_ more menacing or disgusting, if your publication is in
the opponent's corner?

A better example might be this one:
[http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/darkened_mug_shot/](http://hoaxes.org/photo_database/image/darkened_mug_shot/)

Imagine what it's going to be like when the tools are good enough to do more
than just airbrush or darken a static image, but not yet good enough to create
entire "fake news" segments from scratch. It's absurd to think that ML-based
tools won't be used to turn a real audio or video recording into something
different that you and I will incorrectly assume is still real.

That's when things are going to get scary. I'm sure this tech is coming soon
to an election near you.

------
gattilorenz
For the fellow Europeans that cannot read the LA Times:
[https://archive.fo/heTle](https://archive.fo/heTle)

~~~
MickerNews
This site can’t provide a secure connection archive.fo uses an unsupported
protocol. ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

Remember when the web just worked?

~~~
twblalock
I remember when pretty much everything was http rather than https. It's better
now.

~~~
CamperBob2
How?

Why do I need an https connection to read a newspaper?

~~~
brownbat
Herd immunity is one perk.

It prevents anyone between you and the newspaper from inserting some js to
turn your machine into a cannon targeting someone else.

"Need" may be a bit strong, but there are positive security externalities.

~~~
CamperBob2
When has this ever actually happened? Would be curious if there are any good
case studies.

~~~
brownbat
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Cannon)

------
S-E-P
> Now imagine a phony video of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un announcing a
> missile strike. The White House would have mere minutes to determine whether
> the clip was genuine and whether it warranted a retaliatory strike.

Really? Hard hitting journalism everybody. "Mere minutes", it will be
warranted when they see proof of a launch, do you really think the government
just decides based on a video when we have much more surefire ways to
determine these things!?

~~~
bitL
Imagine somebody interested in war starts realistically faking radar etc.
signatures, perhaps supported by tiny planted chips in army infrastructure.
Could be fun.

------
colllectorof
I think part of the problem is that we watch too many movies with CGI and we
trained ourselves to ignore it.

At this point in time face-replace videos can be relatively easily spotted if
you watch them in high quality. At least the ones I've seen demonstrated.

But overall, videos are getting either to fake. At the same time, the weren't
bullet-proof in the past either. The bad part is that now you can do a lot of
it in near real time. So you can change something in a live report.

I see a growing need for public services that cryptographically timestamp
files.

Also, I would like to see research in using machine learning to spot fake
videos.

~~~
hiccuphippo
A nice video channel that shows how some of these videos are made is Captain
Disillusion's:
[https://m.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion](https://m.youtube.com/user/CaptainDisillusion)

------
kosei
Is it just me, or does this phrasing make it seem like he's full of it?

"With further deep-learning advancements, especially on mobile devices, we'll
be able to produce completely photoreal avatars in real time."

What "deep learning advancements" is he referring to?

Doesn't surprise me that he's being sued by his former VP of Engineering for
fabricating the truth (and assault and battery) at all.

------
cmroanirgo
Ever since I saw that 'elephant landing at an airport' video, I've had little
faith in anything on YT being real:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8FJ8la2VU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm8FJ8la2VU)

------
liftbigweights
Hasn't this been the case for nearly 100 years now. Stalin was notorious for
editing out "comrades" from photos.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_So...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_images_in_the_Soviet_Union#/media/File:Soviet_censorship_with_Stalin2.jpg)

Even FDR's photos were edited to hide his paralysis early on.

As long as we have "histories" of videos as we do of photos, can't we
reasonably compare them?

------
heiki
Our team at Mirage is working on solving exactly the same problem. Our current
prototype allows users to detect deepfakes in YouTube videos. Currently very
early stage and any feedback is greatly appreciated. Max video length 60
seconds. Link to demo: [https://deepbuster.com/](https://deepbuster.com/)

------
tsuberim
I think people overestimate the bad consequences and underestimate the good
consequences of such things.

1\. I see amazing potential in AI based content creation. Imagine a world
where you can have all the music/movies you want, personalized to your
specific taste. I would love to have an AI watch Avatar The Last Airbender and
invent a few more seasons for me (find out what happened to Zuko's mom :))

2\. It is true that we should be more careful about what content is genuine vs
fake, but cryptography has you covered, anyone can easily digitally sign the
content they create with their private key and be able to prove the
authenticity of their content.

3\. One thing to note is that AI cannot be used to distinguish reals from
fakes because the fakes are generated (using GANs) precisely so they can't be
distinguished from the reals.

------
twblalock
There is going to be a period of time during which videos are easy to fake but
people are still convinced they are real. This will lead to a lot of fake
news, as well as wrongful criminal convictions.

------
Hoasi
This is starting to become impressive. Isn't there a huge opportunity for
software able to analyze videos and verify their authenticity?

~~~
EGreg
Why not just rely on signatures and watermarks

~~~
jrockway
Photography can be unreliable even if you can't tamper with whatever the
sensor records. The "Russian Ghost Car" viral video is a simple example of
this sort of effect. It does really look like a ghost car, and the video
itself was not tampered with. The camera recording the action just happened to
have a very unlucky angle, occluding the "ghost car" for much longer than
you'd expect. The result is a misleading but 100% authentic video.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQALBUY7OH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQALBUY7OH4)

------
narrator
Don't believe certain politicians are guilty of certain crimes, even if you
see video evidence!

------
anoplus
The first worry comes to my mind is, in case of extreme inequality, the
richest could buy the truth.

~~~
yesenadam
I think that's already been the case, ever since there's been lawyers for
hire.

~~~
anoplus
So isn't that enough to prefer social democracy over capitalism?

------
Nasrudith
The thing about video evidence is that it should be treated like witness
testimony should - verified with other evidence. Manipulative editing can have
similar effects like the James O'Keefe's infamous Acorn libel. If someone
makes a deep-fake of Donald Trump shooting someone on main street with a rifle
the lack of actual blood, 9-11 calls in the area or similar would give it away
as a fake even if technically perfect.

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mgoetzke
sadly the latimes still not reachable from europe

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gcb0
great. now we are on the other side, with the moon landers deniers?

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drummyfish
Very trashy article, doesn't even display in my country.

