deepfake

If I were some deep-thinking futurist type out to make a buck I'd write a solemn book about how the invention of photography, sound recording, radio, motion pictures and television represented the First Mediated Reality Revolution (nb: the capital letters are a requirement in such books), where for the first time humans could experience reality remotely and extend their senses to any part of the world. I'd blather on a bit about the wonder of all this (nb: it really was wonderous to those who lived through it). The upshot of the book would be that You Can't Trust the Media or Even Trust Your Own Eyes and Ears Any More.

But, absent such a bloviating book, all I can say is that we are definitely entering a new stage in fakery that is going to have widespread political and psychological repercussions. Thank goodness for Real Reality (tm) or we'd all go mad.

imo the danger isn't so much that people will believe lies - you don't need deepfakes to disseminate lies - it's that they won't believe the truth

^^that's already happening

people like my mom already tell me that they don't believe anything anymore. she told me last night, literally, that "we only trust our gut now"

granted, she and my dad are 2 of the dumbest people i have ever met, and i say that as an insult to myself, knowing that i inherited their bottomless stupidity

just remember the mantra: I'm dumb as hell, I accept it, and I will never learn

i don't think it's an intelligence issue. many forces in american society, over many decades, have taught people to feel this way--alone, suspicious of their neighbor, just atomized consumers.

trenchant

granted, she and my dad are 2 of the dumbest people i have ever met, and i say that as an insult to myself, knowing that i inherited their bottomless stupidity

it's true though. we can all yet "trump voters" but they didn't spring up out of the ground like that

or whatever

my new theory: andy borowitz is a deepfake

I feel like a neural net could do better than that.

we only trust our gut now

So, a tube of bacteria and poop? okay

That's a fairly reductive way to refer to our president, however accurate it may be.

karl fwiw u are the smartest dumb guy i know
― a struggle to make meat-snacking fit (bizarro gazzara),

i would say thank you, but gotta keep eating this mud at the bottom of the ocean. *Scoooooooooooooooop, Scoooooooo*

via Hoos, "thanks I hate it"

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-deepfake-activist-idUSKCN24G15E

This single image source deepfakery is getting terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d6coarzPsQ

why would you share this

Last year, deepfakery that climbed the uncanny valley required tons of source material, generally tens of thousands stills across multiple videos, that were matched to existing material of a real person, and then color matched for ambient light and fringed into the edges of the face. But when a single mug shot can be manipulated to come pretty close to convincing, its steps further from "movie actors and widely watched politicians can be manipulated in video", into "anyone who presents a single photo of themselves online or just to acquaintances, or from high quality surveilance can be manipulated in video". It just brings home awful potential that anyone whose ever had a mugshot, or posted pictures of themselves online, is providing a character actor that can be relatively easily manipulated, and this tech is going to progress and get better and we won't be able to trust anything again...

this tech is going to progress and get better and we won't be able to trust anything again...

it will progress and get better, and yet we will adapt and still be able to trust people. when people started sending handwritten letters to each other, there were probably concerns about forgeries and how to figure out who actually wrote the letter (partially solved by a liquid seal). i don't know what the equivalent is for deepfakes, but we will muddle on as always.

pretty sure you could have made that point without actually linking that particular incredibly creepy and not funny video my man xp

a terrifying future where we wont be able to trust the internet

Yeah I’m unconvinced deepfakes are a substantial step worse than photoshop

what does “block poster” do on zing?

what you want it to

It will just mark a resurrection of the "I can tell by the pixels" argument.

and they'll know by our pixels
we are fake

i can tell by your pixels that you've prob'ly been faking forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM

I'm pretty stupid and for the first minute I thought Fred Sassy was just some old John Michael Higgins/Rip Taylor lookin rando

also, used to work with a lady who named her dog Sassy

also, my friend's mom named her shih tzus Chardonnay and Cherokee, but I always want to call Cherokee Cheyenne for some reason

also, fuck the noncentral geographic locations of state capitals Cheyenne, Sacramento, Carson City, and Tallahassee

also, vagina poop

Whut

you gotta watch the embedded youtube video before you comment hombre! that's how these internet message boards work these days

I had a beagle named Sassy. She lived up to her name.

okay the kushner
Serafinowicz and Trey Stone, eh? Surprised it hasn't blown up yet.

it'll never blow up cause 1) no cute cartoon characters 2) City Wok guy = CANCELLED

i honestly wish that were so

2018: Deepfakes could seriously destabilise global politics in the coming years and we should be alert to the dangers of disinformation spreading at a faster rate than ever before.

2021: …

pic.twitter.com/JLl8NgoQrA

— Pete Fraser (@petefrasermusic) January 15, 2021

It's still pretty fakey. The mouth movements don't synch at all and are the vaguest kind of open-and-closings, the bodily motions aren't quite human, and the anatomy is weird. But if you're just giving it a barely-engaged glance, it's not glaringly bad. The song is entertaining, which helps.

A friend of mine posted something the other day about the inevitable and rapidly approaching need for some sort of independent verification certification or the like for images and videos.

surely some startup is getting funding for that as we speak, contracts on the way

aimless i gather you're unfamiliar with the SEA SHANTY MANIA sweeping the web

Crichton's Rising Sun predicted the widespread use of this technology, as did an episode of the television series version of Weird Science

Not to be confused with Misfits of Science.

guy on the right has some powerful style

you are correct. I know not this mania. but I predict it won't last. because there aren't enough really good ones and eventually they all sound the same.

https://southstreetseaportmuseum.org/chanteysing/

adobe is working on a standard certification for photos, dunno if it’ll take off

what about a standard certification for sea shanties?

you laugh, but

The leisure songs associated with sailors are labeled simply as "sea songs," but they have no consistent formal characteristics. They are also popularly known among enthusiasts, especially when distinguishing them from shanties, as fo'c's'le songs or forebitters.