Online deepfakes double in just nine months, scaring politicians – and fooling the rest of us Deepfakes - counterfeit content generated by AI algorithms - are on the rise, staining the internet with doctored pornography, fake videos of political leaders, and bot accounts. There are now 14,678 deepfake videos plastered on the net, according to a report [PDF] written by Deeptrace, a startup focused on building software …
PS: The US state of California has approved a law that "bans the distribution of manipulated videos and pictures that maliciously aim to give someone a false impression about a political candidate’s actions or words within 60 days of an election," according to Assemblyman Marc Berman (D).
Good luck in trying to enforce that on the WWW... it will be like trying to carry water with a sieve.
This post has been deleted by its author
I'm guessing that the tech isn't perfect and fakes can be rather easily detected. A shadow that falls wrong, lighting that is not changed, etc. Today's deepfakes are just the draft versions, it's tomorrow's deepfakes that will be frighteningly realistic.
So I'm going to do what you cannot count on Joe Public to do : if I see a video on the web with a prominent politician doing unspeakable acts, I'm going to wait for journalists to confirm that it is not a fake and the video is real. Until then, by default everything concerning political figures or celebrities is something I will file in Deepfake until otherwise notified.
@Sir Spoon - I think the point is missed. Once the story is out, that it's not true, but people want it to be, means it will be "true".
So a certain gammy ex British PM, red snappers and rock bands, hamsters and rock stars back passages and so forth are clearly unproven, but pass for accepted truths.
It's more about confirming a persons world view than convincing a skeptic.
Since it's all about "apps" these days, where is the impetus to supply an "app" which generates a sequenced QR code every 10 seconds, and which someone could hold up in a video as proof of authenticity, when it's really needed. No code = no verification.
Obviously the seed for the sequence is related to a private encryption key that itself can be verified by whoever needs to.
Not perfect. Bit clunky, But quick, easy and cheap.
Oh, and totally of no interest to all the tech companies *and* political parties I've contacted. Which (for me) is the bigger story.
The QR code would be a digital signature of the previous frame. If you paste a 'valid' QR code after the a different frame the signature would not match.
The actual reasons for failure are:
1) The QR code would cover a significant portion of each frame. (Can be fixed by using a detached signature for the complete video just like is already used to validate software)
2) The signature would not match a video that had been cropped, scaled or transcoded for better compression.
3) We would be relying on a bunch of raving idiot politicians and PHBs to keep there secret keys secret.
4) We would be relying on a largely computer illiterate population to install verification software that actually performs verification with the correct public key.
Yeah, it can be done without the QR code via the camera, similar to watermarking current images/video (IIRC some games/software does do this to catch cheats uploading video to Youtube).
However, as you say, the codes getting out would be oh too easy and the computation rather large I assume (Bitcoin for example is starting to hit economically unviable levels, right?).
"Fake bot accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn using deepfake images as profile pictures are plastered on the internet too."
So what? The problems with faked videos of politicians and so on are fairly obvious, but why would anyone care that a scam Twitter account is using an edited image instead of just a random one it's found someone on the internet?
Using someone else's picture is problematic as a reverse image search can reveal the scammer is not who they claim to be. Using a unique (generated) image makes them seem more real.
*edit* so if we can detect the image is generated, it should alert users/systems to the presence of a fraudulent user.
I heard there was a way of encrypting videos with blockchain/crypto between frames so that there is a way of checking if a video has been cut/doctored. Devices would need to insert the encryption as a video is recorded so footage can always be traced back to a verified source.
How practical that is currently I don't know, but seems like a potential solution to use alongside machine learning.
No more so than every positive one. Do you think all pols are virtuous, or that any of it - either way - is other than spin designed to "frame a narrative" - and distract attention from the actual truth? Really?
Personally, I'm a bit tired of this reality thing. Is there any extra room under that rock?
A few ideas:
1) You'd like to insert yourself (or someone you know) into a famous movie scene for a laugh
2) There's a deceased person you'd like to re-animate without a very tedious cut & paste of individual frames from their previous works (dead actors)
3) You'd like to face swap a toy cat and real cat in a video without using snapchat filters
So, there'll be plenty of reasons that don't harm anyone and aren't pron related - it's just the majority of the effort has gone into various sexual fantasies. Doesn't mean we should try and ban it now.
The more obvious one is you'd like to paste the face of your big-name, impossible-to-insure actor onto the backflipping-out-of-a-thirtieth-floor-window body of your no-name stuntman. They've been doing exactly this with varying degrees of convincingness since at least Jurassic Park (they pasted the girl's face onto the stuntwoman doubling for her when she was hanging down into the kitchen where the raptors were).
Another: you've just shot a movie at enormous expense using a big name highly decorated actor. The last reel of film is in the can (or whatever the digital equivalent of that is), and just as you go into the edit suite it turns out your star has been fiddling with kids his whole career. Do you
(a) hire a different big name actor, remount the shoot and do the whole thing all over again? OR
(b) hire a different big name actor, take a couple of hundred photos of their face, and simply paste it over the performance you already paid for?
"turns out your star has been fiddling with ..."
This issue has been dealt with in the aftermath of #metoo on numerous productions.
The current solution seems to be reshoo all scenes featuring the unwanted actor.
Not sure whether a deepfake solution would tick the right boxes.
Movies. If you can pay a programmer to create the next Sean Connery or Marilyn Monroe, you would no longer have to pay exhorbitant rates to people who can lie with a straight face (or read from a script if you prefer.) One advantage to that is they'll never get old, and you can fire the entire makeup department and the tailors and most of the caterers (along with most of the rest).
"what was the pressing need they were trying to fulfill inventing this stuff."
I don't KNOW what was in the original programmers' minds, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the process started out as a late-night, drunken " '...wouldn't it be a neat hack if we could...', 'Y'know... I'll bet if we...' " conversation that they had the misfortune to remember the next morning.
This statistic is lifted from promotional material written by someone who is trying to sell a product to counter the problem they claim is out of control.
Their tool (which you can't see) gave twice as many positive results (no word on the accuracy) and now people need to give them money or they'll give even more positive results next year.
that everything on any form of media can be faked and if there is money/power in it, then it will be
that most people can still be fooled even when they have all the evidence
that politicians are the last people you should trust to control fakery since it is their stock in trade.
that you have been lied to by everyone by you met since you were born and you are still no near enlightenment.
The cake perhaps is real but everything else is a lie to keep you exactly were you are i.e. in the dark and under the thumb
That politicians are censoring publications in advance of election should not be a surprise to anyone and yet here we are
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
