Deepfakes being used in 'sextortion' scams, FBI warns Miscreants are using AI to create faked images of a sexual nature, which they then employ in sextortion schemes. Scams of this sort used to see crims steal intimate images – or convince victims to send share them – before demanding payments to prevent their wide release. But scammers are now accessing publicly available and …
Does this not also work the other way?
If someone is threatened with releasing pictures they can just say "Go for it, I'll just tell people they're deepfakes and not me". It also stands to reason that if someone is threatening you with a deepfake then anyone can make that deepfake if they can get the picture of course so it instantly loses any value.
Unfortunately it also means that every scummy politician* will be able to use the same excuse when the video of previous events emerge that would hurt their future prospects. I'm sure there are a number who wish this technology was available much earlier in their careers.
* I tried to think of other classes of people (celebrities, business people, sports people, etc.) that I might list. But politicians stood head and shoulders above anyone else I could think of.
They already are.
And elon has tried to use "it could be a deep fake" as a defence in court - despite him saying it onstage in front of thousands of people, more than once, in 2016 & 2017! (His claims saying Tesla would be full self driving within the year, which he's now being sued over)
I imagine there has already been at least one situation where a modestly endowed man has been blackmailed with a deepfake of him as a well hung porn star. So the only way he can get out from under the shame of appearing in a porn movie is to admit to, shall we say, only having had a small part.
There was a time when if you saw a photo then what was depicted must have happened. Then photoshop came along and there was a short time when some people could be fooled by a photoshopped image. Then everyone learned and photoshop became an everyday tool.
I see no reason to think deep fakes will be any different. Once we learn we cannot trust video this will be no different to photoshoping someone head into a sex scene.
I do not believe there is much future for freely available AI image detecting software. The nature of generative adversarial networks means people will just incorporate whatever detection tool in the learning algorithm.
It has been a thing well before photo-shop. Newspapers have been sharing on edited or 'untrue' photos since the Cottingley Fairies and before.
Now the pictures may move and be in colour but not in any of our lifetimes have we been fully able to trust a picture or video we didn't know the provenance of.
The idea that we can rely on AI systems to detect deepfakes seems to ignore the fact that the very reason GANs work so well is because they are trained against an "adversarial" network until it can't spot the difference. All we'll achieve is ever increasingly perfect deep fakes that is practically impossible to detect.
It also seems ironic that the go-to application of any new on-line technology - porn - is probably training our future overlords. At least they'll know how to have a good time.
Hmmm...
Jim
Unless it's verified, don't believe that it's true.
There's been some very convincing photoshopped pictures over the years: That's been enough to question the validity of anything that isn't verified. And even then: Verified doesn't mean it's real, either. Just that someone has stepped up to say it's real, so you've someone to blame if it's not.
So, what to do instead? Generate vast quantities of such images. For everyone. For non-existent AI-generated lookalikes. For whoever and whatever you can in all possible variations. Make them easily available. Let everyone know.
Then they become banal and useless for extortion. Of course such pictures exist. Of course they are fake. Who cares?
Sure currently there would be legal problems, and with minors this is not likely to be an option, etc. But generally, the ease with which they are generated is not the problem; it is the solution.
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