from Hacker News

Fake Obama created using AI tool to make phoney speeches [video]

by mychaelangelo on 7/17/17, 9:30 AM with 107 comments

• by jnbiche on 7/17/17, 12:34 PM

  I was really suprised when the original paper for this didn't make it to the top of HN: http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/AudioToObama/

  Nor any of the follow-up articles I posted. Given onslaught of fabricated "news" that spread around the last election, this type of ML technology is almost guaranteed to play a role in the next one.

• by nkrisc on 7/17/17, 12:41 PM

  I wonder if it's easier to make a fake speech of someone who talks the way Trump does? Not making this a political thing, but I've noticed that he's not very eloquent and frequently starts and stops in his speech and changes what he's saying mid sentence. Might it be easier to synthesize that type of speech pattern since any awkwardness can be hid in the erratic speech the real person employs?

• by Diederich on 7/17/17, 4:19 PM

  When an open source package author releases a pile of source code, that person typically also releases a cryptographic checksum of the code.

  In the future, when the President (or CSPAN, or CNN, or Fox News, or whoever) releases a segment (which they do all the time), they'll need to release (in a public, 'timestamped' way) a cryptographic checksum of the content.

  I have many of the same fears as people here about future fake news, where the reality of something already comes as a distant second behind the outrage produced. So even if we had this big pile of content and checksums, the outrage echo chambers will still be going nuts.

  But it's at least a partial technical solution to these problems.

  (And I'm glossing over all kinds of other complications too, such as 'what format' and 'where does it get stored' etc etc)

• by scarmig on 7/17/17, 3:13 PM

  It makes you wonder just how far fake content--and fake content involving real people--can go.

  Imagine a world where a service exists to which you can upload a dozen images of someone, along with a voice clip. In response, it can generate all kinds of videos--from the benign, to the person saying horrible racist things, to the person starring in graphic pornography.

  It seems technically feasible in the medium term. But how do we react to it? Strict limits on the production or storage of these pseudo-artifacts? Criminal penalties for distribution? A cultural rejection of pretty much all video and audio evidence?

• by rybosome on 7/17/17, 1:57 PM

  I'm truly frightened by this. We are still struggling with how to deal with the "post-truth" world, and that's with the assumption that pictures are hard to fake, video even more so, and audio nearly impossible.

  Fake news is going to reach a fever pitch when "speeches" of Obama leak saying, "We have to take all the white people's guns". And conversely, when a genuine "grab 'em by the pussy" leaks again, a huge chunk of people willfully will not believe it.

  Seems possible that we could come up with technological and journalistic solutions, given enough time, but it's moving too quickly.

• by EGreg on 7/17/17, 12:58 PM

  I have been saying for a while now that our current systems are all relying on the inefficiency of an attacker.

  Soon, video and audio of an event or speech be proof of anything.

  The only way to prove identity will be to have a device which can do challenge-response.

  Without it, you won't be able to prove you're not a robot over the internet.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14787882

  Forget "hacking elections". A botnet will be able to hack our trust in one another (see CIA reputational attacks), AI will be used to chat up girls online better than any person (see fb AI sales bots), and so on.

  Computers can already beat us at Chess, Go, etc. How much different is humor, honor and reputation once companies add one more breakthrough to deep learning to model them?

  An attacker that can make 100,000 jokes a second each of which is excellent? The missing breakthrough is how to automate the "human judging" factor. This is the problem when figuring out diets or treatments etc. Clinical trials take a long time. Same with textbooks.

  Once we figure out how to speed that part up, we are going to be able to make AI that knows what's probably going to be funny ahead of time.

• by samcodes on 7/17/17, 3:03 PM

  Looking ahead 10-20 years, I don't see how anyone born from 2015 onwards has any solid concept of reality the way I feel I know it. Between things like this and AR, I feel like "real" vs "simulated" will seem to the AR natives to be a pedantic distinction... Like how my parents still distinguish between "having met someone" and "someone I have talked to on the internet."

• by kmfrk on 7/17/17, 1:02 PM

  I really recommend the Adobe demonstration of their VoCo speech audio "photoshopping" because of Jordan Peele's reaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3l4XLZ59iw.

  More technology demos should have unscripted, sincere reactions like that.

• by arnaudsm on 7/17/17, 12:34 PM

  The next generation of fake news is going to be fantastic.

• by stevenh on 7/17/17, 1:52 PM

  The audio itself can also be faked now.

  https://lyrebird.ai/demo

• by Oras on 7/17/17, 1:18 PM

  What worries me is that this is just a public research done in uni. What should we expect from secret projects then?!

• by dheera on 7/17/17, 5:27 PM

  http://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/frequency-of-...

  Basically, we now have the video version of this graph. It came a little later than Photoshop, but as with any technology, anything that is technology possible will be implemented by somebody at some point in the future.

• by armenarmen on 7/17/17, 5:41 PM

  After the Falkland island war the British anarchopunk band Crass spliced together and leaked a tape that made it seem like the attack was a false flag and that Reagan wanted to start a war with the soviets in Europe

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatchergate

• by isaaclyman on 7/17/17, 1:48 PM

  This demonstrates an immediate need for a trustworthy video hosting service--maybe with a companion app that records using some combination of crypto/proprietary formats/trust networks/I don't know what else, this isn't my area of expertise. Things are going to get pretty bad here soon if video evidence loses its street cred.

• by agentgt on 7/17/17, 2:38 PM

  Now we just need some way to digital sign speeches (and hopefully eventually with quantum cryptography).

  I'm not sure how but perhaps this could actually improve the issue of fake news with or least the assimilation if there as a broader realization how easily things can be faked... probably not though (I'm eternally an optimist).

• by transitionnel on 7/17/17, 9:11 PM

  Well...this kind of thing is here to stay, and at least some good may come of it. We can all be reminded that even "true" words are still just words.

  An example from all of history: (This is only semi-serious, but felt like a good thought experiment).

  > Oligarch to politician - "Make this economic change." > Politician to team - "Give me post-facto justification for this change I am making." aka "Spin this" > Team - Applies economics to numbers > Team to politician - "Here you go." > Politician to people - "Economics does not lie." > Vaunted economics publications - "Sold. And thanks for the like." > Economic failure > Future politician - "Well, we just didn't know then what we know now." > Historian of the future - "Their economic calculations lacked the full set of economic forces and incentives. The economists of the time were in effect hand-waving because they ignored a fundamental economic force--the oligarch. Given the size of the oversight, I'd say they were complicit."

  Thoughts: --Economic policy sold without disclosure (or even acknowledgement) of these massive forces is knowingly flawed, and a willing lie to handle people. --Economic theory is rooted in psychology. When an economic decision is spun to cover hidden motives, the psychological motive basis of that instance of economics is, by definition, false. --Data can still fool good economists when it is cherry-picked; any data produced by a non-omniscient process is going to be flawed to some extent.

  * This is not to say anything good or bad about oligarchs. Merely that they are a tremendous force, and economics, political policy, and civil discussion could greatly improve with a more accurate model of their effect on global systems.

  * I'd love to see an economic modeling tool able to place "black boxes" where market distortions are occurring due to probable hidden forces. Captive markets are a real nuisance.

• by theelfismike on 7/17/17, 2:01 PM

  I hope they call it Fauxbama.

• by stillsut on 7/17/17, 1:29 PM

  There's been a growing fear of how much dirt is going to get spilled when the current generation with omnipresent camera-phones goes to run for office. But this signals that we could be nearing the end of the age of embarrassing leaked video or audio!

  From now on, it could be plausible to deny a video and say someone built a neural net and faked it - 'at least I have no recollection of those events.' (The excuse will work for supporters)

  The Mitt Romney's '47% are takers' could go down historically as the last great leak where leaks could be believed.

• by dkarapetyan on 7/17/17, 3:21 PM

  Time to learn how digital signatures work.

• by skc on 7/17/17, 2:19 PM

  If you've ever gone through the pain of trying to convince someone why some picture or video is an obvious fake then you know just how terrifying this technology is.

• by LeoNatan25 on 7/17/17, 3:25 PM

  Like with other, more easily forgeable conteby, such as text quotation, we will find ways to provide a chain of trust in order to authenticate what has classically appeared much more difficult to spoof, such as voice or video. The only challenge that will remain is explaining to people that the nonsense they watch on Facebook is not factual just because it is on Facebook.

  “Use the force, Harry” – Gandalf

• by e12e on 7/17/17, 3:00 PM

  Is the first section of the video badly out of sync for anyone else? Both the real and fake initial segments appear way off to me?

• by nocoder on 7/17/17, 12:59 PM

  Isn't this similar to Adobe project Voco? If not how are they different. There is also another tool called Face 2 face. I think overtime people will assume everything to be fake unless it agrees with their pre-conceived notions of truth.

• by kristiandupont on 7/17/17, 1:25 PM

  I guess that we will start to rely on multiple recordings of an event to consider it proven. Until, of course, 3D recreations start to appear rendering that useless as well.

• by aaron695 on 7/17/17, 4:57 PM

  This also may allow high quality educational videos to be created. (Think of all those smart people who are bad presenters)

  And high quality entertainment.

  Ain't all bad.

• by imranq on 7/17/17, 3:08 PM

  What's the benefit with a technology like this? Seems like it can only cause harm

• by _pmf_ on 7/17/17, 1:08 PM

  "And make no mistake."

• by wubbfindel on 7/17/17, 1:03 PM

  I read a book last month that featured a faked president video created by an AI.

  Kill Process by William Hertling Link: http://amzn.eu/c1ZJNcv

  Seems it was closer to non-fiction than I expected.

• by signa11 on 7/17/17, 5:02 PM

  and then you have this as well: https://lyrebird.ai/

• by cmurf on 7/17/17, 3:17 PM

  Proof of provenance.

  We're going to need signed videos...

• by jbrl on 7/17/17, 12:27 PM

  Well it's better than what we have now...