
AI-assisted fake porn are being used by people on Reddit for self-completion - DyslexicAtheist
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/872276-ai-assisted-fake-porn-are-being-used-by-people-on-reddit-for-self-completion/
======
mabbo
This is what's being accomplished by one amateur with a little bit of
hardware. Imagine what will happen when you have professional services (legal
or otherwise) making altered videos of whoever or whatever you want.

Want court evidence of your wife cheating? Fake grainy hidden camera video.
Want to discredit a politician? Here he is picking up a male escort and using
racial slurs. These sorts of things could be used to start wars.

Sure, deeper analysis might prove that this video isn't real, but that won't
stop the immediate public reaction and response. The knee-jerk reaction to
what the public sees is the end-goal. I'll bet good money that this technology
plays a major role in future elections.

~~~
jcfrei
The problem I see with tech like this is that it muddies the water for
everyone. I find it very strange that technologies like the internet appear to
have created a world with more ambiguity and less transparency than we've had
before - mostly because people now can find support for any kind of belief
online. Some people are either willing to learn or have learned how to get
information from reputation based systems and some will just go rogue and
create their own reality. I hope democracy survives this shift: Because not
only will we have to discuss the facts, now we will also have to discuss: What
are the facts?

~~~
vertex-four
We've always had to discuss what the facts are - the extreme bias between
newspapers and TV channels picking and choosing facts to provide to their
users, even on the same news stories - news source A chooses not to provide
background info, news source B chooses to provide background info from one
primary source only, news source C chooses to provide background info from
another source, news source D chooses to provide a general overview but with a
slight bent towards assuming that its readers hold values X, Y and Z, etc etc.

You can go back and read stories from the 1950s which have these issues and
more. There has never been a time where all individuals involved in a
democracy have understood all the facts. Popular politics has always been
driven by newspapers and special interest groups.

In my country, implementation of a certain policy has very clear correlation
with a marked increase in suicide rates - the slow rollout of this specific
policy across areas of the country provides an easy way to show this. Certain
newspapers refuse to report on this - it doesn't match their ideology - after
all, when pointed out, people holding this ideology will often point out that
suicide is one's own decision and it's not the Government's problem.

~~~
hiram112
Which policy is causing suicides?

Seems like you'd mention it unless it is a politically charged issue, perhaps
related to gender relations or immigration or something.

~~~
vertex-four
It's related to a benefits reform designed to cut costs by giving people less
and making them jump through more hoops to get it, without providing any
additional support.

------
akerro
Source code: [https://github.com/joshua-
wu/deepfakes_faceswap](https://github.com/joshua-wu/deepfakes_faceswap)

NSFW posts
[https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfakes/submitted/](https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfakes/submitted/)
(includes porn)

------
jamix
What's the big deal? Photoshop has already taught us not to trust photos, so
we'll just have to learn to stop trusting videos now.

[https://singularityhub.com/2016/05/13/new-digital-face-
manip...](https://singularityhub.com/2016/05/13/new-digital-face-manipulation-
means-you-cant-trust-video-anymore/)

------
okman
The deepfakes subreddit is remarkable - people without any prior background in
machine learning or programming are asking tons of questions and learning all
about deep learning. I've always thought applications-first was the best way
to teach complicated material, this might be great evidence of that.

~~~
jmkni
Porn has always been a factor in driving technology forward.

People who weren’t motivated before to learn machine learning or programming
suddenly are.

This is no different!

------
blunte
On the flipside, this gives anyone basic plausible deniability.

No baby, that homemade porn video on my phone wasn't me! I just used a program
to stick my face on something I found on the internet.

~~~
onion2k
Plausible deniability doesn't really work in real life though. Very few people
are going to give you, or anyone accused of an indiscretion, the benefit of
the doubt on the basis that a video might have been faked with AI. That is
_much_ less plausible than someone cheating and getting caught.

If you think anyone is going to accept that a video is fake, _even if it is_ ,
then you're woefully naive.

~~~
LV-426
As someone with a generally cynical/pessimistic outlook I too, like _blunte_ ,
want to see something positive in this.

Hopefully, since it can't be stopped, it becomes so routinely used against so
many people that everyone stops caring any more if it's real or fake.

It's sad that our attitudes (if not behaviour) towards sex are still so fucked
up and judgemental thanks to thousands of years of
religious/Victorian/puritanical brainwashing and guilt-tripping.

~~~
andrepd
Western sexual revolution can be said to have happened little more than 50
years ago. Culture takes a lot of time to revert.

------
touchofevil
I've worked in the visual effects industry for many years and this is
incredibly interesting. In vfx to create a face replacement, we would have to
create a 3D model of a head and then texture it with photos/scans of a the
desired face. Then we would 3D track this cgi head onto an actor in the shot
and then animate the face either by hand or using motion capture data from the
stand-in actor's face. Then you'd light and render the cgi head and composite
it into the shot.

This video shows the process:
[https://youtu.be/rsPq2qp_Z-E](https://youtu.be/rsPq2qp_Z-E)

And here's an article about it: [https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/di4d-in-
la/](https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/di4d-in-la/)

It's pretty incredible that there's a completely different way to do a head
swap. Of course, the vfx method gives the artist complete control over what
the face/head does.

------
djhworld
Outside of porn, I'm wondering if this could be used in other ways, e.g.
government propaganda. Putting leaders in situations that make them look good
or putting their opponents in compromising situations.

~~~
akerro
It not only can be, but it was [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApG1XdI-
Dd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApG1XdI-Dd4) there were a few months when
JA didn't give any sign and people on /r/wikileaks started asking if he's
still alive, then this video was posted. It's fake.

~~~
neuralk
No, that video is real. Those are morph cuts.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6wPUtKg-
Ac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6wPUtKg-Ac)

------
naner
Extrapolating this means companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon in
the near future should have the technology and the data to be able to recreate
almost anyone's voice and likeness in audio and video. Also I guess fake news
will be much more if a problem.

------
allengeorge
Maybe performers will start to license out their face for use in adult videos.
You don't have to participate in the porn itself, but you'll get a tiny
royalty from each view. It's an interesting way to monetize your appearance
without having to be physically present. I can totally see people coming up
with performer "mod packs".

------
CapacitorSet
Quick preview: u/deepfakes,
[https://www.gfycat.com/UnsungTotalAmericancrow](https://www.gfycat.com/UnsungTotalAmericancrow)
(NSFW).

Very cool, it has a few problems with merging the face but the expression is
very convincing. Obviously, it doesn't work very well for very different faces
([https://imgur.com/gallery/OpD3RXC](https://imgur.com/gallery/OpD3RXC) SFW).

~~~
NelsonMinar
It's funny you pick this as an example; the very first thing I see is the cut
line on her eyebrows, like some hideous plastic surgery gone wrong. Skin tone
doesn't really match either. Perhaps this stuff is less visible if you're
distracted by the rest of the scene.

~~~
CapacitorSet
Yeah, but merging the new face with the old picture is not the purpose of this
tool. Rather, consider how the new face has a realistic expression, and how
indeed the skin tone doesn't match perfectly.

------
pavel_lishin
The user in question is here:
[https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfakes/submitted/](https://www.reddit.com/user/deepfakes/submitted/)

You can see the examples of their work at the bottom of that list. It's very,
very obviously not the actual actresses. It's impressive, but not "holy shit,
could that really be..?" impressive - there are artefacts scattered all over
the faces.

------
yarg
Who cares about the pornography aspect? Of significantly more concern is our
societal reliance on video evidence in general. Ultimately there's no software
solution here; adversarial networks will be capable of generating high quality
simulations that even they cannot distinguish between.

I'm also struggling to think of any viable hardware solution that doesn't
involve in camera black boxes with asymmetric encryption - which is a hack at
best.

------
christofosho
I wonder if this will lead to a trend of people going to see events live, more
often. Given that seeing something occur live is going to end up as the only
"real way" to trust something to be true. Scary to think that reality has
become questionable in itself.

~~~
sarreph
Exactly my thoughts, too. As other commenters have pointed out, we no longer
trust photos as a source-of-truth, and need video instead. Maybe 'verified'
live streams are going to be the next trustful source...

------
asdfologist
What does self-completion mean?

~~~
gaius
_What does self-completion mean?_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)

------
tedivm
I just read the post and there are points where it flat out lies about what a
source said.

From the article-

> There are studies that demonstrate that porn viewing desensitizes ones
> genitals and reduces white matter in the brain.
> [https://www.wired.com/2014/06/is-it-really-true-that-
> watchin...](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/is-it-really-true-that-watching-
> porn-will-shrink-your-brain/)

Then from the article they linked to in order to justify that claim it says
the opposite-

> It's just as likely that men with less grey matter in their striatum are
> more attracted to porn, as opposed to porn causing that brain profile. The
> researchers know this. "It's not clear ... whether watching porn leads to
> brain changes or whether people born with certain brain types watch more
> porn,” Kühn told The Daily Telegraph

~~~
jamaicahest
> I just read the post and there are points where it flat out lies about what
> a source said.

Thank you. I was just about to comment the same. But I suppose accurately
quoting the Wired article didn't support their opinion, so they decided to
make up their own conclusion in the Wired article and ignore the one actually
written in the article.

------
omeid2
For the New Year's day, Hacker News gives you porn links.

~~~
Pica_soO
You should check-out Ghandi doing Margreth Thatcher- it has something poetic.

------
brango
I can think of a few non-porn applications for this.

It also seems like it wouldn't be a million miles from this to being able to
generate the 3D armature of a person in a video, kind of like a kinect in
reverse (i.e. video file goes in, character armature comes out). Does anyone
know of anything doing this? I want to be able to do motion capture from flat
videos with AI building the armature.

------
apo
The story here isn't porn. It's that we can no longer trust video evidence -
of anything - in isolation.

------
tzakrajs
Video itself is not enough information. We need a cryptographic way to capture
and archive corroborating signals at the time video is recorded. Perhaps there
is a verifiable means of determining the geographic location, background
radiation and orientation of the cameras taking the video which would be nigh
impossible to spoof.

------
cryoshon
the larger issue is that if it's this easy to create fake photorealism, video
evidence is no longer valid.

not from the government.

not from amateur videographers.

not even from a video you took yourself-- think of it from everyone else's
perspective.

but people believe their eyes.

we are witnessing the capstone of the national security state's propaganda
strategy for the next few decades... when in doubt, construct a false reality.

------
nailer
celebfakes is the next Reddit hand grenade: the site has 'involuntary porn' as
a category for reporting posts, yet simultaneously has a popular subreddit
dedicated to involuntary porn.

~~~
superkuh
Citation needed? What subreddits? If you mean the _tiny_ deepfakes subreddit I
don't think anything there is involuntary.

In case it isn't clear, this isn't leaked videos or celebrities doing actual
porn. It's synthetic renders similar to their faces based on publically
available material. The celebrities aren't actually involved in any way. It
isn't even really photos of them. It's an abstract model.

But surely you understood that? And in that case I don't get what you're
saying.

~~~
DanBC
Please could you provide a photo of your face?

~~~
superkuh
There are photos of my face on my self-hosted website linked in my profile.
There aren't hundreds of photos though because I'm not a famous public figure
who trades privacy for money. Bit of a difference. Good luck regardless and
send me the results.

------
Odenwaelder
WTF did I just read?

