
Photo-realistic lip-sync from text - giacaglia
http://ritheshkumar.com/obamanet/
======
wizardforhire
I'm enamored and terrified at the same time. As a documentary film editor this
is going to literally save my ass for those times when production didn't quite
get it right. As a citizen, hacker / child of the 80's whose watched a few
successive generations come around I feel it's going to be that much harder to
have a good bullshit detector. I've watched in disbelief as my peers believe
in whatever happens to be printed and watched culminating into our currrent
fake news catastrophe. I predict an even greater rift between the skeptical
few and the duped masses. Maybe there's hope? Maybe when nothing can be
believed anymore everyone will be forced to become skeptics. I doubt it
though. It takes good mentors and willing minds to develop good bullshit
detectors. It's sadly not something that is obvious to most in my experience.

~~~
untog
> Maybe when nothing can be believed anymore everyone will be forced to become
> skeptics.

I don't think that's a good thing, though. Right now you can catch a
politician in a lie, on tape. Once that's easily faked people will just see
whatever confirms their preexisting bias.

It's something more than being a skeptic - when there's no definitive proof of
anything, you just pick and choose what you believe.

~~~
foota
There was an interesting take on this in black mirror, the idea was that
sensor technology would grow quickly enough that you could produce high enough
quality fakes to stay ahead.

------
dontreact
This is awesome. My paranoid side is greatly concerned with the recent news
that Trump has been denying the Access Hollywood tape to people. With
something like this around, he could point to literally anything, say it’s
fake, and a significant portion of the population would believe him.

~~~
neotek
If the last few years has taught us anything it's that Trump supporters don't
need _any basis in reality whatsoever_ to maintain a belief in whatever Trump
says. Trump could claim aliens from Mars are influencing the mainstream media
and /r/the_donald would have a sticky up linking Martians with Clinton before
Breitbart was finished typing the headline.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Not sure if you're intentionally referencing it, but NASA did have to deny
that it was running a child sex slave ring on Mars during the election after
an accusation by an Alex Jones guest.

~~~
Johnny555
I really thought you were making that up. Yet...

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/nasa-denies-that-its-
running-a...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/nasa-denies-that-its-running-a-
child-slave-colony-on-mars)

It was even picked up by space.com

[https://www.space.com/37366-mars-slave-colony-alex-
jones.htm...](https://www.space.com/37366-mars-slave-colony-alex-jones.html)

------
js2
Radiolab episode on the subject from earlier this year:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-
news/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/breaking-news/)

------
make3
It's funny to me everyone says it looks really good. I actually feel like it's
surprisingly bad, but it's indeed just a start I guess.

~~~
bramen
Pretty firmly planted inside the uncanny valley. I think it'll be a while
until it's truly convincing, but it should be interesting to follow.

------
LV-426
The video claims it's to help people who have lost the ability to speak. Can
someone explain how this is supposed to work?

Because it looks more like, and is seemingly marketed as - if a video of
Barack Obama saying things he hasn't said is typical - a way to make prank
videos.

Edit: And why is it even called ObamaNet? Is it endorsed by the former
president?

(I'm not making a political point here, I'd ask the same if it was TrumpNet or
GagaNet. Is Obama notably connected with this kind of tech or research?)

~~~
Aditya_Garg
There's a popular youtube channel called barackdubs where the creator stitches
clips from obama's speeches into pop songs.

~~~
exikyut
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvHn0MTf40rdEQu6Y2yNL5g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvHn0MTf40rdEQu6Y2yNL5g)

Very interesting, thanks.

------
lisper
They haven't quite gotten out of the uncanny valley here. It sounds like Obama
is slurring his speech at times. Still, very impressive, and more than a
little scary. I'm sure that with a little more development they'll be able to
knock off the last few rough edges, and then we really won't be able to tell
truth from fiction in videos any more.

------
mustacheemperor
I have to wonder if today's instant and constant news cycle will end up being
a brief anomaly, once the technology to literally create "fake news" is a bit
more powerful and accessible. Will journalism require much more verification,
or will the torrent of crap just become uncontrollable?

~~~
danso
Sure, why not? The improvement in tools to efficiently produce and disseminate
video are enjoyed by honest journalists too. Many of these official events
have more than one photographer/videographer [0]. If only 1 outlet can produce
a highly-suspicious video of a public event recorded/observed by dozens of
other outlets, then distrust that single outlet. We already have had to do
this in a medium that is efficiently easy to fabricate: text.

Society as a whole will just have to realize that video is as alterable as
text.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/insider/a-photo-of-
james-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/insider/a-photo-of-james-comey-
takes-the-internet-by-storm.html)

~~~
sahil-kang
This is a fantastic analogy. Since you've pointed out how alterable text
mediums are, I'm now thinking of services which provide a ranking of accuracy
for text publications. Off the top of my head, I can think of two metrics: (1)
The number of sources a publication cites, like a bibliography. (2) The number
of publications which refer back to a publication, like PageRank.

------
avenoir
There is a saying in Russian that goes "Одно лечишь — другое калечишь" which
translates roughly to "You heal one thing, but cripple another". I understand
that they see this technology used by people who lost the ability to
communicate, but in my opinion, it's far more destructive than it is helpful.
Either way, the Obama video is leaps and bounds better than other demos I've
seen just a few months ago. Pretty impressive progress.

------
beager
This sort of thing really makes me feel like the field of "authentication" is
about to become much broader and extremely important.

------
exion
Does anyone else find it amusing it sounds like "liar bird"? I think their
intent is very nice, but all I can see in the long run is this being abused by
conspiracy theorists and people with an agenda to distort the truth.

People are gullible enough as it is (e.g. 9/11 conspiracists), and usually
just want to believe what they already think is true. This will just fuel
ignorance and is another reason why it's very important that we somehow as a
society get people to think for themselves sensibly.

That said, the demo they showed is very impressive, very good work by them.

~~~
Lxr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird)

------
np_tedious
Looks pretty good. Their example video _sounds_ terrible and robotic,
seemingly by design.

Would the best approach to actually deceiving the viewer be a voice
impressionist paired with this technique?

~~~
save_ferris
With the rate at which this technology is advancing, I see this as more of an
MVP to a much more powerful tool in the not-too-distant future. But I also
wouldn't hate being wrong on this one.

------
cdevs
The lip syncing tech looks great, and the personality that comes out in the
voice would be a dream to have if I couldn't speak for myself.

------
flexie
Now it will get much easier to fabricate statements and much easier for
someone to deny something they actually said (by claiming it was fabricated).

This is a Photoshop of voices and as such it is neither more or less
dangerous.

We desperately need better ways to detect BS built into browsers, social
networks etc.

~~~
org3432
Turns out the masses have been getting duped for millennia it's so trivial. So
the bar is pretty low already.

------
2pointsomone
That is absolutely excellent work - the very best of DL. Keep crushing it,
Lyrebird team.

------
lovelearning
I'm surprised they have blatantly named it ObamaNet. Will it not make them
vulnerable to defamation or impersonation or some other legal violation? Is
this kind of use of a person's name, face and voice legally allowed in US?

~~~
vtange
I think they named it exactly this to highlight the possibility of malicious
use for defamation/impersonation attacks. Plus if it was really used to say
impersonate Obama, it'd be rightly referred by name in the news as "Obamanet",
which to a layperson would sound like a smoking gun.

Lyrebird.ai similarly followed this approach as they realized their own
technology could be used for nefarious purposes given the current political
climate.

------
justboxing
Isn't this the same video from
[http://futureoffakenews.com](http://futureoffakenews.com) ?

~~~
saagarjha
I found ObamaNet to be much high quality, to be honest.

------
lph
These researchers are building weapons. I hope they understand that.

~~~
ajdlinux
Lyrebird's website leaves me with no confidence whatsoever that they
understand the ethical implications of the technology they're developing or
that they are working to develop their technology in such a way as to address
those concerns.

I hope every company that's working on this stuff either fails, financially or
technologically, or ideally gets regulated out of existence, at least until
they commit to working on technology, policy and journalistic techniques to
mitigate the absolutely inevitable misuse, because as a society we simply are
not ready for this. If you work for one of these groups, you should either
ensure they're working on said mitigations, or quit.

~~~
whataretensors
Technology is always a double edged sword. It's up to all of us to ensure that
the good outweighs the bad.

