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Comment by linux_devil | Hacker News Reader

Just imagine people using this tool to spread false claims and propaganda. Can we also determine if the video was actually edited or forged?

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Their mouth movement wasn't particularly natural in the parts where the speech was edited.

It's good enough that it will fool some people on Facebook/Twitter, but it's pretty far from being able to stand up to any scrutiny.

Isn't that all it takes to spread propaganda? We're living in an age where if it feels right, it is, even if it's blatantly false.

I agree that their mouth movement wasn’t particularly natural, but I disagree that it isn’t enough to fool most of us if we’re unaware. We’re not fixing our eyes on a person’s mouth while they talk.

Think of the scenario where someone edits a few seconds of a 30-minute interview. They make the interviewee go from saying they hate drugs to saying they love drugs. Even if you weren’t expecting that claim from that person, would you go back and recheck their mouth movement, to be certain if it was edited or not? Unlikely. Even if you would, I’d wager most wouldn’t, including most of us that could detect it.

For propaganda, this will be great. The thing is, you don't even need convincing videos for propaganda to work.

For truly scary things, like falsifying evidence, I think it will be awhile before this will get past expert analysis, or even a group of people on Reddit trying to prove it wrong.

In the long term, video will simply be treated like photos are now. With disbelief.

It can also be used to 'ratfuck', if a video is released with a politician saying a gaffe, they can release a bunch of similar but fake videos and then claim that 'all of them' are fake. The confusion would sow doubt- the technique could be used offensively as well as defensively.

The tech is only going to get better, faster, and easier to use. And that will happen incredibly quickly. Being able to spot artefacts in the output is not a viable defence.

> Just imagine people using this tool to spread false claims and propaganda.

That was done in The Expanse novels, I wonder if that is where people get the ideas to create things like this from.

> Can we also determine if the video was actually edited or forged?

Detecting fake videos is actively being researched and there are working methods available, governments are very much aware of the danger.

There will still be some lag between initial release and govt response. C.f. The War of the Worlds broadcast

Yikes, yeah. The War of the Worlds broadcast panic was an accident, too. Imagine an engineered panic on that scale. Especially if it was released through a trusted news source, by either hackery or social engineering.

Ironically, the current belief is that The War of the Worlds panic was greatly exaggerated: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/war-of-the-worlds/

GANs can be used to detect this sort of thing if trained well enough. Any manipulation tool is going to leave some kind of signature. Eventually you'll end up in an algorithmic arms race, and you'll be able to fool some people, some of the time. (Pretty much the same as things have been since the Spanish-American War.)

Smaller economies are going to get screwed by this, though, as they won't have the resources to fight yet another technological battle.

How do we know it's not already in the wild? Ethical release of this would focus also on some way for easier forensic telltales that are hard to avoid.

Also, rule34 implications.

It'll be used to debunk true claims, too.

My thoughts exactly.

Running m-x dissociated-press on a Trump speech makes it still sound like a Trump speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociated_press

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