AI-Assisted Fake Porn Is Here and We're All Screwed (vice.com)

New submitter samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: There's a video of Gal Gadot having sex with her stepbrother on the internet. But it's not really Gadot's body, and it's barely her own face. It's an approximation, face-swapped to look like she's performing in an existing incest-themed porn video. The video was created with a machine learning algorithm, using easily accessible materials and open-source code that anyone with a working knowledge of deep learning algorithms could put together. It's not going to fool anyone who looks closely. Sometimes the face doesn't track correctly and there's an uncanny valley effect at play, but at a glance it seems believable. It's especially striking considering that it's allegedly the work of one person -- a Redditor who goes by the name 'deepfakes' -- not a big special effects studio that can digitally recreate a young Princess Leia in Rouge One using CGI. Instead, deepfakes uses open-source machine learning tools like TensorFlow, which Google makes freely available to researchers, graduate students, and anyone with an interest in machine learning. Anyone could do it, and that should make everyone nervous.

Comments

I think all reality is in jeopardy

[jfdavis668]

Soon we will not be able to determine real from fake. Nothing can be proven real. We will have to suspect everything.

Re:I think all reality is in jeopardy

[thinkwaitfast]

This was the subject of a 1985 issue of BYTE! magazine that asked what happens when real-time video streams cannot even be trusted.

Why is this bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let people act out their fantasies in VR rather than have them do it in real life. If it doesn't hurt anyone, then why is it anyone's business?

Re:Why is this bad?

[Pfhorrest]

You must live a pretty cushy life if you think sex is the only motivator for men to do anything. I for one mostly do things so as to reduce the odds of dying in the street when I'm old.

Re:Why is this bad?

[bobbied]

Let people act out their fantasies in VR rather than have them do it in real life. If it doesn't hurt anyone, then why is it anyone's business?

Well.. This confirmed prude doesn't care as long as:

1. The only person possibly hurt is you.

2. I don't have to know about it... AND...

3. You don't make me approve of your choices.

If you can live within those limits, do what you want, just leave me out of it...

Re:Why is this bad?

[morethanapapercert]

I've posted this before on related stories, but I think it bears repeating: Once the uncanny valley is definitively conquered and rendering becomes cost-competitive with a live actor, I predict we're going to see a return to the old "studio system" of the silver screen era. Only, instead of a bunch of utility actors and a few big stars whose lives are micro-managed by the studio, we're going to see studios and production companies coming up with their own virtual cast and headline stars. No union worries, so scandals, no practical limits on how much "on set" time a given character can give. (no child labour laws!!!) Absolutely everything about a character being micro-managed and massaged according to the latest polls and trends. Popular characters never have to age, they can't hold a production hostage demanding a bigger cut of the proceeds and can be "fired" incredibly easily and comparatively cheaply.

What is going to be interesting are the lawsuits over the use of the likeness of some dead celebrities. Is there any studios that still have movie rights to Elvis? Would his estate disagree? Could an actors estate sue on the grounds that a given production was one that the actor would never have been caught dead in? (see what I did there?)

Fake Video "Testimony"

[Aero77]

The real threat will be fabricated "video surveillance" footage and other "proof" used to "prove" or "disprove" anything the editor wants. What do you believe when everything you see can plausibly be called "fake news"?

Re:Fake Video "Testimony"

[nine-times]

It's one thing to create edited video that fools a casual observer, and another that stands up to forensic analysis.

I don't know how far we are from having undetectable fakes. I don't know if we can stop that from happening, and I don't know what we do if we reach that point. I could see there being something where each camera manufacturer embeds certificate in each camera, which can then be used to digitally sign each frame of video. I'm sure there'd be downsides and it wouldn't make things absolutely tamper-proof, but it could make undetectable forgeries harder to create.

I suspect there will be a bit of an arms race between forgers and people trying to make forgeries difficult, sort of the same way the government keeps creating anti-counterfeit measures for money. It doesn't 100% stop counterfeiters, but it generally makes it possible to detect counterfeit money if you're looking for it.

Re:Fake Video "Testimony"

[Thirty4]

By the time a good fake video is shown to be fake, people would have moved on. Damage done.

Re:Fake Video "Testimony"

[omnichad]

I could see there being something where each camera manufacturer embeds certificate in each camera, which can then be used to digitally sign each frame of video.

I could see that too. It would have nothing to do with fake news. It would be about DRM and your rights to use video that you shot on your own hardware without paying extra.

Re:Fake Video "Testimony"

[GameboyRMH]

For a while there probably will be many James O'Keefe vs. ACORN type incidents where mendacious activists casually implode institutions they don't like with faked videos, but eventually people will catch on and become more skeptical of recorded evidence. The downside is that people will also have to act more slowly on evidence that happens to be true.

Incest Porn is Fake Sh!t

[DatbeDank]

I've been noticing this weird as hell incest porn overtaking the "most popular videos" sections on major porn sites as of late.

All of these are entirely fake. There's no real step-siblings or mom/stepson actually videotaping this crap. It's all actors talking bullshit or just a couple just lying for click bait.

This sucks because incest (even if it's fake shit) is a massive turn off. It's becoming a huge nightmare to find good milf/cougar porn because all of the actresses have migrated into this fake incest crap.

What?

[glenebob]

This article seems to imply that there are people who are surprised by this. People actually didn't see this coming years ago?

Re:Not all downside

[Aighearach]

You're mistakenly presenting being double-creepy as if it would be a shield to hide your creepiness.

Hint: If you're even talking about one person wearing it, talk about both people wearing it. Parity = Good, groveling at her Pedestal = Creeper

Re:so?

[iggymanz]

you're hilarious, various tricks for creating "fake photographs" are 200+ years old. Putting people that weren't present into a photo, changing the location, extreme touchup to change appearance, creating what we might call fantasy / sci fi effects...all old hat. Faked photogaphss have tricked experts in the courtroom too.

"Then came photoshop", pfffffft. Get off my lawn, kid.