Artificial intelligence software could generate highly realistic fake videos of former president Barack Obama using existing audio and video clips of him, a new study finds.
Such work could one day help generate digital models of a person for virtual reality or augmented reality applications, researchers say.
Computer scientists at the University of Washington previously revealed they could generate digital doppelgängers of anyone by analyzing images of them collected from the Internet, from celebrities such as Tom Hanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger to public figures such as George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Such work suggested it could one day be relatively easy to create such models of anybody, when there are untold numbers of digital photos of everyone on the Internet.
The researchers chose Obama for their latest work because there were hours of high-definition video of him available online in the public domain. The research team had a neural net analyze millions of frames of video to determine how elements of Obama’s face moved as he talked, such as his lips and teeth and wrinkles around his mouth and chin.
On the one hand, it renders attempts at blackmail totally useless. Any video evidence will be dismissed out of hand since there will be no way to verify it. And if they can do it in video, they can do it everywhere else, from audio, to documents, to electronic footprints. So you can gather all the intelligence you want on people, but outside of its kinetic uses, it will be worthless.
On the other hand, grasping truth from a plethora of fake evidence will require such a finely honed amygdala I am not sure it can be done. As it is, I am increasingly unable to make decisive analyses of information because I recognize that nothing is necessarily what it seems. Between fake news, lying leftists, partisan hacks in government, and the shadowy parts of government looking to manipulate events, it is difficult to tell what is real from what is Memorex.
How can a nation ostensibly run by its citizens function, if the most intelligent citizens recognize that nothing is necessarily real, and they don’t know anything for certain?
Spread r/K Theory, because when you can’t trust anything it will be the world’s anchor
[…] Fake News? Meet Fake Video […]
The best way I can see to get around this is to sign everything you release with a private key of sufficient strength. That should work unless the NSA has made significant breakthroughs in math (factoring large prime numbers) that we don’t know about.
Of course, this doesn’t deal with the issue of people not believing “leaked” documents, but it could be used by anyone producing content (text, audio, or visual) that wants to prove that they did in fact produce the content and that it hasn’t been modified in any way.
The irony. Obviously we will have to go back to relying on eye witness testimony. Back in the old days, we didnt have cameras or phones, or handwriting analysis. Men had to form tight communal bonds and be capable of taking care of themselves. A witness could always lie, so society had tight punishments for any breach of honesty,
What will happen is societies will either learn to have incredible integrity among their members, or they will simply tear themselves apart.
This is the end of large scale social interaction. Only the nearest, almost personally experienced will be trusted.
“Between fake news, lying leftists, partisan hacks in government, and the shadowy parts of government looking to manipulate events, it is difficult to tell what is real from what is Memorex.”
If it’s in the MSM, assume the opposite and you should at least react BETTER than the MSM believers. It looks to me like MSM journalists want to INVERT the truth. Regarding trump, regarding Black On White vs White On Black violence, regarding the kind of people we imported into Germany, regarding men vs women. Even in nutrition. They promoted carbs since Ansel Keys’ forged 7 countries study. They ALWAYS lie, persistently and on EVERY topic.