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The US Military is Funding an Effort To Catch Deepfakes and Other AI Trickery (technologyreview.com)

The Department of Defense is funding a project that will try to determine whether the increasingly real-looking fake video and audio generated by artificial intelligence might soon be impossible to distinguish from the real thing -- even for another AI system. From a report: This summer, under a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the world's leading digital forensics experts will gather for an AI fakery contest. They will compete to generate the most convincing AI-generated fake video, imagery, and audio -- and they will also try to develop tools that can catch these counterfeits automatically. The contest will include so-called "deepfakes," videos in which one person's face is stitched onto another person's body.

Rather predictably, the technology has already been used to generate a number of counterfeit celebrity porn videos. But the method could also be used to create a clip of a politician saying or doing something outrageous. DARPA's technologists are especially concerned about a relatively new AI technique that could make AI fakery almost impossible to spot automatically. Using what are known as generative adversarial networks, or GANs, it is possible to generate stunningly realistic artificial imagery.

6 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Considering the Fake News are already using edited videos of Trump as the sources for their fake news, the problem is much deeper than the deepfake videos.

  2. Our politicians already say outrageous things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No need to fake it. Our citizenry expect it, because the United States is turning into a full blown Idiocracy, and both the left and right are bring drawn into it, compelled by moronic (but good sounding to one group of people) views.

    P.s. the whole point of the GAN paradigm is that it can produce more convincing fakes by first improving the algorithm that detects fakes and then splicing the improved version into the system.

  3. Re:Sharing Deep-Fake porn should be Sexual Assult by Jeremi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about -- in 10 years time nobody will be able to believe anything they read, hear, or see, at which point democracy becomes unworkable. As Jefferson famously said, a properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate -- but it's nearly impossible for anyone to be well-informed when every valid piece of information is competing with a cloud of equally-plausible forgeries, and even people operating in good faith can no longer discern what is or isn't real.

    We are already seeing this occurring, with segments of society breaking off into their own enclosed media-bubbles, the walls of which become increasingly impermeable to inconvenient facts or reasoning, as any evidence that would traditionally cause them to adjust their worldview now simply gets dismissed as 'fake'. I see no reason to think it won't get worse over time.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  4. Re:Sharing Deep-Fake porn should be Sexual Assult by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Creating or sharing photo-realistic AI generated porn should be sexual assault.

    I prefer that we leave the definition of sexual assault alone.

    In a rape joke culture, it's already hard enough to get actual sexual assault (i.e.: a physical assault with a sexual intent) taken seriously.

    We don't need something that isn't a physical assault masquerading as a sexual assault, giving people the idea that sexual assault isn't serious.

  5. You are pretending like that has ever been true. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Go read up on the Spanish-American War, the Opening of Japan, Native American/German-American/Japanese-American Internment, etc. The frothing masses have always been fed whatever narrative makes them back the currently desired course of action since the founding of this 'fair country'. If you go back further you can find the same action going on all over the world, only overshadowed by rebellions when the narrative was disrupted by facts on the ground, usually resource shortages or labor abuses so prevalent that word of them got around the propaganda and everyone knew someone who could verify it with boots/letters from the ground.

    The news/internet of today is no different. The only way to divest yourself of the propaganda is to have a network of trusted individuals, some of whom are in the affected regions who can report on what is actually going on there, just like has always been true. If you or someone you know has not met them in person and spent time with them, they are just as unreliable as the news or a reporter.

  6. Re: Sharing Deep-Fake porn should be Sexual Assult by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You really need to get some perspective.

    How is making a (technically sophisticated) even in the same league as attacking someone?

    What about people who happen to look like famous people? Are they banned from making porn? Twins?

    Get a grip. If you are so fragile that you can't live with the idea of someone using your image in ways you don't like, you clearly have few actual problems to complain about.

    People near you are being attacked, starving and dying of preventable diseases. Your imaginary problems are not worth the electrons I am using to debate them.