VOID: Video Object and Interaction Deletion | Hacker News Reader

VOID: Video Object and Interaction Deletion

github.com

182 pointsbobsoap55 comments

Would make economic sense for a ton more of "Choose your own Adventure" content

I can imagine watching Bandersnatch and getting rid of the game developer in frame 1. The remaining 90 minutes, his dad having a quiet, stress-free Tuesday.

Removed brain cancer from xray films

Enjoying 5 seasons of chemistry lessons

Removed the mother. Enjoying 9 seasons of a man cornering his teenagers on a couch, describing every woman he's ever dated.

Removed the ring. Just watching three movies of Frodo and friends living life in Hobbiton.

Removed the zombies. Just a guy in a sheriff's hat losing every group vote on where to camp next.

Removed the island. Now it's just a surgeon, a lottery winner, and a man carrying 40 knives all trying to get through TSA.

Reminded me of "Garfield Minus Garfield" - https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

"""

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

"""

Inserted myself to Friends. Endlessly rewatching every epidode trying hard to disassociate from my real self

That’s the usual mode of watching Friends these days? :)

Nobody can afford real friends in this economy

That's actually a really good idea. It would be like fanfic except replacing actors instead of writing new plots. Die hard fans of various shows would go banas over it.

You forgot the /s

Removed the /s. Nothing materially changed.

Very interesting discrepancy in the attached example:

- "removing the kettlebell" led to removing the visual representation of the kettlebell as well the deformation it makes on the pillow

- "removing the hands" removed the childs hands from the tops, but did not then lead to the tops falling over!

Others like the colliding cars are in some weird gray area between the two.

One should note as these tools proliferate, there is a lot of artistic expression that we are giving up to these imprecise natural language parsing engines.

I think we'll regain the artistic expression/control in the future if the tools become popular.

We saw this with StableDiffusion. First it was just text-to-image. Now we have controlnets which can control the precise placement of objects. We've got depth maps, body positioning, all kinds of things. I can even sketch on my tablet and tunr that into an image.

I'm sure we can add options for what this physically affects or doesn't affect.

Woah, this is absolutely sick! 10 years ago me would have been surprised something so small can encode all the world knowledge necessary to make this plausible. That they'd make this openly available is a dream.

I don't think it can continue the no-interaction line too far. This may be enough for movie-making purposes though.

CogVideoX continues to be an academic powerhouse model. So many papers built on this little thing.

Really weird comments here. It's a VFX technique for cinematography, one of many of that kind (e.g. supporting wire removal). Cinematography in general is about showing something that doesn't exist, unless it's a documentary. Your only reaction is apparently calling censorship. Says a lot about the current Overton window and I think it's something you should reflect on.

No, I get it, and the benefits of putting what would have required a professional VFX team at (eventually) the fingertips of every amateur filmmaker are amazing.

It’s also alarming what’s possible when reassembling photons en masse becomes commoditized.

> It’s also alarming what’s possible when reassembling photons en masse becomes commoditized.

Photons Be Free?

Yes but imagine how bad Stalin’s reign of terror would have been with modern cinematographic techniques.

Yes but why are we required to imagine only this? With this logic, why won't we try to imagine how bad Stalin's (or Hitler's, or anyone's) reign of terror would be with state-controlled social media? With state-censored Internet (that's about current Russia, by the way)? With modern communication technologies et al. and so on?

Hell yeah, let's go back to the caves just because science, technology and progress can actually empower everyone, including dictators, maniacs, psychopaths, predators and "bad people et al.", not just "good" (the definition of "good" varies, but let's assume we're using common principles of goodness) people.

That's an absurd point. That nearly absolute cult of personality never relied on movies, printing press was more than enough to make the reality disappear. And previous ones weren't even relying on printed media at all.

To be honest, if that's what we see in open access, then there must already be something in existence that is closed. I don't want to create another conspiracy theory - I just want to point out the theoretical possibility - but if it was created, it has probably already been tested and possibly even used widely. So, in conclusion, if a government or agency wanted to use that technique for censorship, they would most likely already have tried it.

It's kind of late to ring the bells once the city walls have been taken. In other (shorter) words, if someone wanted to use this for censorship, they would already have tried it, so... it's either too late or too early; although being interesting (but not good or fun) probability, it's probability only.

...I hope one day everyone, just everyone will finally learn that most of the technologies are not evil or good, they're neutral, they're just tools. And most (no, not all) of them were also created with good intentions.

You don't really need AI to do this, it can be done just fine with traditional techniques, just labor intensive. Hell you can probably find a dude on fiverr to do it right now for a couple hundred, YMMV.

But wouldn't using this for eg. removing a support wire result in it making Superman fall down?

The act of editing existing footage to mask reality with non-reality is just that—the action of making something real less real. It can be used for filmmaking (and obviously often is), but it can be used for anything else too.

The issue is how easily these tools can (and will) enable the worst faith actors and actions. It's not controversial (or shocking) to think the current situation for deep-fakes or deceptive edits is historically awful. It's equally reasonable to think these tools are going to do less good for VFX houses in Hollywood, and more evil in authoritarian regimes or chaotic social media networks. You're right that the Overton window has moved—but we ought to blame a White House that disseminates deepfakes, not commenters on HackerNews.

Tools aren't just tools, nothing exists in a vacuum. A plane is a useful means of transportation, but that doesn't mean everyone should be rushing into the cockpit. It's pretty plain to me how a tool that streamlines doctoring footage to such a useful (and deceptive) degree is just a recipe for disaster. Considering the benefit to society is...slightly eased CGI work (?), I'll easily label this a net-negative for us all.

Given the current situation in the world why do you not think about technology can be misused, especially if it’s VFX.

I guess I have seen more AI generated spam ads than content created for the intended purpose.

> Given the current situation in the world why do you not think about technology can be misused, especially if it’s VFX.

I think the point of the parent was that while you need to think about how this technology can be misused, that's not the only thing you need to and can think about.

If that's the point then it was a dumb point to begin with because there were a whole two top level comments mentioning censorship at the time. Technically it was a majority, but only because so few people had commented.

Anyone who's ever had a break up will thank you.

I don't see any demos. Did I miss something? Not interested in running a Colab.

You missed the embedded video near the top.

Thanks. Shockingly the GitHub iOS app just completely omits that.

The Android app does the same thing

This will save a lot of money for the prod house, considering each country may have different censorship rules.

[flagged]

Also lets them quickly censor things the West doesn’t like, as a client state of particular nations in the Middle East

VPN sometime if you have doubts about that in western media, including US

does no one recognize the fascists in the USA who envy this?

State-approved VPN would alter the video and stream it to you. This is the only way to stay on the right side of the history

Why China?

I see this being used in many countries, especially in the West.

We've crashed head straight into a dystopian future. But worry not! The crash can be edited out of reality.

Which films have had items censored out of them for release?

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls033928706/

Netflix: 13 Reasons Why: Following concerns from mental health professionals, Netflix edited the first-season finale in 2019 to remove a graphic scene depicting the main character’s suicide. Back to the Future Part II: In May 2020, it was discovered that a scene involving an adult magazine cover was censored in certain regions. Netflix stated they had received an edited foreign version from the studio and later restored the original scene. Bird Box: Following public outcry in 2018, Netflix agreed to remove footage from the 2013 Lac-Mégantic rail disaster used in the film's scenes, as it was deemed insensitive. The Devil Next Door: In 2019, Netflix added extra text to a map in this documentary series after complaints from the Polish Prime Minister regarding the portrayal of Nazi death camps. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj: An episode critical of the Saudi Arabian government was removed in Saudi Arabia in 2019 after a government takedown request.

none of that is censorship

> Which films have had items censored out of them for release?

I said "I see this being used" as an idiom for "this is likely to be used soon" ("I see this happening in the near future"), not that I've seen this used already. But, like the commenter who responded to you showed, movies already get edited to censor things.

soo basically, they'll replace "coke can" with "redbull" or similar depending on who pays for ads in video? what else they gonna use it for?

I can see this being one of many AI tools for video editors. Combined with a handful of other tricks an SFX shop should have a tremendously higher productivity.

ultimately we could get 4K remasters of old movies/shows where it's currently not worth redoing the FX

Removing film crew, boom mics, and missed props from a scene would surely be useful to studios. It may even enable some shots that previously would have been impossible due to the positioning of cameras, etc.

The idea of applying this modern magic to history & art is horrifying. The dream of Minitrue!

Presumably Netflix wants to erase smoking from its back catalog or some other bit of papier-mâché Stalinism.

Oh well, neat bit of auto-regressive theater.

You'll really hate this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Fhb7JW93U

Correct.

If it is made with AI I am not buying.

Yay! More tools for faking stuff!

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