FBI Warns That Deepfakes Will Be Used Increasingly in Foreign Influence Ops
lawfareblog.com
lawfareblog.com
you don’t need fake content or lies to create disinformation. In fact, you want to use the truth as much as possible. Just not the whole truth. Selective editing is an extremely simple technique, which has worked since many decades. The real casualties of deepfakes aren't political adversaries but young women (something which isn't talked about enough).
edit: here is a really good take on this by grugq: https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cheap-fakes-beat-deep-fakes-b1a...
The aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election is replete with examples of footage from election centers and dueling narratives emerging from people interpreting what the staffers were doing. I remember back at the 2004 presidential debates, people were accusing Bush of having a listening device strapped to his back based on a few dark pixels that looked like a bump. And 9/11 footage must have been poured over for millions of man hours now, with conspiracists seeing what they want to see.
I'm not sure if even "concrete" evidence like video proof is worth anything anymore. People will choose to believe what they want to. Evidence isn't the problem. Consensus is. Like the crisis of reproducibility in science, the communal framework for evaluating news (usually for political or other tribal ends) is broken. It doesn't matter how real evidence is if people aren't going to reject anything that conflicts their story, prima facie.
Deep fake footage is bad, but as you say, there are simpler techniques like selective editing, that have always existed. And you can provide the most pure and uncut evidence, but if there's no mutually agreed-upon protocol among observers, they will walk away with their own interpretation.
This warning isn't about what is, but what will be. I don't see how one can be familiar with the recent history of disinformation created using relatively unsophisticated methods, and simultaneously not understand the Pandora's Box being opened by cheap, easy, and perfectly-convincing synthetic content.
Given that legislative and law enforcement efforts are unlikely to roll back this tide, especially from foreign actors, the better path is forward: more deep fakes, cheaper and easier tools, lower friction methods of vouching for content, yielding less gullible consumers.
I don't know which is better. It's very hard for me to imagine the world where nobody believes such things. Will we continue to have a third of US society believing in an alternate reality? Will people start signing every statement cryptographically, so that nobody can put fake words in their mouths? Will the need to track the reputations of news providers (rather than taking the videos they provide at face value) render spewers of nonsense less influential?
But, alas, yes, even without deepfakes, society is susceptible to reality distortion.
I bet there are some security challenges there, but this is the only way I can think of in order to protect the Republic from purposeful misinformation by differentiating between real and edited/fake,synthesized, footage going forward.
Basically, anything and everything can be faked. And people will trust what confirms their biases.
Unfortunately, I personally see no solution to deep-fakes. The worms are out of the can, and we now have to question everything we see, which is A LOT to ask of people. Even if governments band together to "ban" deep-fakes, tightly regulating the internet to track deep-fake origins, or a more sinister "1984" approach, you still have the obvious issue that deep-fakes can be created by those who regulate the masses (our governments).
Movies will be made more and more with this tech to save $$ on casts.
There is already so much noise pretending to be news that few people pay attention anymore to the media.
Just another version of click bait.
Sign up a youngster for a small fee. Scan the shit out of his body, voice etc.
Free actor for life.
Kid gets $500 lifetime payment.
If you sign the kid, you still need the artist, the psychologist, the writer, the economist and the publicist in any case. Why would they not simply go all the way and cut out any potential name and likeness disputes?
OK, if the kid is an athlete, fine, I get that. EA has to do that now. But if I just want to create a bubble gum pop idol. my incentive is to be greedy and not share with anyone if possible.
AI technologies, with a little help from specialists like psychologists ensuring the product is addictive, make it possible for me to be greedy. It's happening in porn now, and if it's happening in porn, it'll happen everywhere else soon enough.
With deepfakes you can have peter pan like actors who will not age or even reverse age. everyone will have 8 pack abs and 36D busts (or whatever audience likes). In fact there could be A/B testing of how actors should look and behave.
Next obvious step is people like me volunteering to be that "extra" behind the key actor and engage in a bidding war. All I have to do is give my body scan and one of the zombies killed by Rick in walking dead could be me.
Bulbs did not replace candles, they created possibilities that candles could not.
In reality it will be both and no one will change because people don’t believe anything from the “other” side anyway.
Following this line of thought, why not release deepfakes of yourself to provide plausible deniability for your statements? If people believe it - good! You meant to say it. If people decide it's not what you would have said, you didn't say it anyway.
Nobody apologized and it seems the public didn't care either. So we can conclude that truthful information isn't always desirable, especially when it comes to feeding the masses. Anybody with a brain already realizes this and understands that deepfakes can and will be used on the general public, "for our own good."
Fixed that for you
I also wonder, who is going to be the first major public figure to claim some evidence of his/her wrong doing is a deep fake and part of a foreign influence op?