Tape recorder tricks invalidates recording evidence.
Photoshop invalidates photographic evidence.
Now movies?
Various forms of moving image manipulation has been taking place since the invention of moving images. As with any technology, it gets easier to do as it disseminates out to the general public. The question, as always, is "why would anybody bother." You're hearing about this now as "deepfakes" because it's a consumer-level technology that applies a consumer-level want at a consumer-level price. In other words, "I want to add to the burgeoning constellation of Emma Watson anal deepfakes and am willing to spend an hour at the computer for something I will never be paid for, but which will allow me and my hairy-handed brethren to dream more easily." The counter-case is a journalist who enjoys putting his wife's face on Anne Hathaway. You'll notice that A) no one is paying him to do this B) he didn't ask his wife if she wanted this. That's important: yeah it's kinda fun to do stuff like that but as gifts go... This is one of those crafts where to the creator, it looks cute. To the victim, it looks like that head from The Thing that grew spider legs and crawled around. The Uncanny Valley is one thing when it's a stranger. When it's you? The technology to do this has been around for a long time in the professional sphere, but there hasn't been any call for it... unless you're talking about "shit, we need Grand Moff Tarkin in this scene and Peter Cushing has been dead for fifteen years." You'll note that audiences were... impressed? by that trick because none of them really remembered Grand Moff Tarkin but as soon as they resurrected Carrie Fisher results were a lot more mixed. Fundamentally? We're talking about the value of authenticity in a sphere where artificiality is easily accomplished. And it's been twenty years since DeBeers started slapping serial numbers on their "real" diamonds because the fakes were chemically and physically identical and they still own the diamond market.Beyond just pure fun, I can only imagine how people will start turning this tech into business ideas. Fashion will be huge (what would I look like with this kind of hair, this kind of dress…), fitness could be interesting (do I look good with muscles, will I really look better skinny), travel (this is you standing on a beach is going to be quite convincing). It’ll bring advertising to a whole new level. No need to imagine what if, they’ll tell you what your “better” life will look like! And it’ll be hard to get that picture out of your head…
I don't think we're quite there yet, but it may not be far off. Given my profession, I'm especially interested in the legal implications for things like right to identity and privacy.
I think that privacy as we think of it is going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Something will survive to evolve into chickens and robins and cardinals and shoebills but Privacy writ large will not survive. For privacy as we know it to come back and also persist, you need to make John and Jane Q. Public give a damn about digital security. And you cannot force the public to give a damn about digital security. Yes, the technology needs to be better/more accessible so that non compsci majors can have a hope of understanding what's going on. AND. People, average, 6th grade reading level people, have to give a damn. And they don't. They have bigger problems like rent, medical bills, childcare.
I think you are dead wrong. Privacy is a dead concept. There are cameras everywhere and every bit of info about your life, even stuff you don't know exists, is in a database that is being shared. Your hacked data is being sold due to security breaches at companies you have NEVER interacted with (Equifax is just one example). And on top of that, the young people I interact with have no concept of a private life. EVERYTHING they do is under public scrutiny. By the time these people get into a position to make and enforce laws, I'll be dead. Yet I still care about this issue. Privacy is a vital human right. It is needed for a free society to exist. It is needed for a representative democracy to exist. Privacy is a critical core need for a sane, healthy, human mind. And this critical component of who we are was taken from us to sell advertising, starting in the 1950's.I think that privacy as we think of it is going to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Yeah, pretty much. Although in a way the advantage to all of this is that if everyone's dirty laundry is out there, I expect people will get less judgmental.
I suppose. There have always been libertines, there have always been puritans. I suspect that because norms and mores are always changing, there will always be someone to call a libertine and someone to call a puritan.Although in a way the advantage to all of this is that if everyone's dirty laundry is out there, I expect people will get less judgmental.
Yeah, true enough. I wonder if the new norms are less privacy? Is this what it feels like to be behind the social curve?
Yes, the tools aren't quite easily accessible/usable yet, but they are getting better, and I'm sure it won't be too long before it becomes relatively easy to "photoshop" videos in order to make it look like someone is doing something they never did. I expect that at some point in the next 5 years or so there will be a major scandal or two where big news orgs are fooled by fake videos of high-profile figures.
Snark is not knowledge. You're able to pronounce "provenance" and by implying that I am an untrustworthy intellectual you are aligning yourself with the historical forces of fascism and mob rule. Are you sure you want to do that? If you prefer, I can talk to you like the idiots you're apparently siding with and say "It's from the Tonight Show, Ben. CBS dug it up over two years ago. And when you argue that any licentious (sorry, I meant 'bad') image of the President must be fake, you're arguing exactly what the Russians want you to argue." Fundamentally, this is a discussion about the trustworthiness of networks (is "trustworthiness" too big a word for you, Ben?). It is a trivial (simple? Easy? Not hard? How low-brow do you want to go, Ben?) matter to evaluate the trustworthiness of this particular clip. Where things get difficult - and where the discussion should be had - is when untrustworthy data is treated as trustworthy and disseminated ("spread around"). Ask Dan Rather. Have you noticed that lately, you like substituting platitudes for knowledge, Ben? I have. And I think it's what makes you angry. Life is not a Deep Thought by Jack Handey.
I'm not doing that. I am illustrating that the existence of consumer level deepfakes creates problems with real video footage because now shocking but true things can be dismissed as deepfakes, even if proof to the contrary is abundant. There is a class of people, who vote, to whom fact-checking isn't a part of their day to day life. There is now another tool in the toolbox of those who are attacking objective reality, and that is claiming that video evidence, or even streaming video, is being interfered with/has been interfered with and is therefore fake news. I have been 'quippy' lately. I am fighting, and mostly winning, against the urge to write *long, shitty, negative diatribes. Consider it my embracing of a lesser evil. Who knows, one day I might even vote blue team. I am aware the Giuliani/Trump video is real. I am making the point that it is even more easily dismissed in the era of deepfakes.Are you sure you want to do that?
That is not at all true. You just don't value or respect their style of fact-checking. If they see it on Fox News it must be real. If they hear about it on Info Wars it must be real. If it shows up in their Facebook feed it must be real. If they hear it from a friend it must be real. But if it gets forwarded to them from Mother Jones? They're going to ignore it because it's fake news. There's that nasty, five dollar word "provenance" again. There is no one walking this earth that credulously accepts what their eyes see and their ears hear when it disrupts their worldview. That's the core of the issue: who do you trust and why do you trust them. Twenty years ago nobody said "it's fake I can tell from the pixels" but now 70-year-old women have an opinion about Photoshop. But it's not. It was sourced from a known recording at a known event whose provenance was confirmed by those responsible, and then disseminated via a major entertainment source on a national broadcast network. Sure - trip across it on 4Chan and you doubt it. And the forgery of imagery, no matter how compelling, has always been a matter for amateurs.There is a class of people, who vote, to whom fact-checking isn't a part of their day to day life.
I am making the point that it is even more easily dismissed in the era of deepfakes.
And the forgery of imagery, no matter how compelling, has always been a matter for amateurs.
A delightfully different circumstance. Art provenance is another aspect of the same problem: reputation. Dan Rather staked his reputation on the Killian documents. Vouching for the Killian Documents meant destroying his reputation. An art dealer that is caught selling forged Giacomettis? That will destroy their reputation, too. But then, someone needs to want them to get caught. There's a great chapter in The $12m Stuffed Shark about the Warhol Foundation and how a Warhol was real or not depending on what a council of experts decided. Their deliberation was closed, their decision was final and they basically decided what Warhols were worth money and what were worth nothing, because Warhol was one of those guys who kept bad records, used a lot of shops, and often made more examples after editions were closed, etc. They packed it in in 2012 because they were paying $7m a year in legal fees. In the book, Diego initially hid the castings, but after Alberto's death in 1966, sold them to collectors in Greece, France and England. Count Waldstein, as Guido S. wrote in his tall tale, had bought the bronzes back from the collectors. Even the ISBN number printed in the book was a forgery. Every forgery needs its legend, and every forged work of art needs a plausible provenance. I own a Magritte print. I paid about $150 for it off eBay back in '02 or so, about the time I decided I couldn't afford a Yves Klein for $12k ($3k more than I paid for my car at the time). Kleins are more like $1.2m now and who knows what the Magritte is worth; it's got a stamp on the back from Gallerie Alexandre Iolas, the dealer that represented Magritte but that's pretty easy to forge. It's not a well-known Magritte, either, and it took fifteen years before I discovered that's because it's been in a vault since the Islamic Revolution. Did coming up with a plausible story as to why my Magritte print is virtually unknown increase the likelihood it's a licensed print? Not at all. But it gave it a story. It increased the provenance of my print in my eyes, which makes it easier to convince my friends. There's a willful suspension of disbelief in a lot of art. This is due in no small part to the intellectual property value being imperfectly transmuted to the physical property value. I've got a little Banksy, too - purchased by a friend for me out of a shop in Gaza where it was made under license by Palestinians. Banksy, whoever he or they are, has likely never even seen it. But I get to tell my friends about my Banksy. And any friend who disputes my Magritte isn't going to get invited to my parties anymore. I'm never going to use it to influence public opinion. The authenticity or inauthenticity of that print will not, for my purposes, ever be used in any influence peddling, unlike forged news media. I ended up reading a weird book when I was about 9 years old. It's about a poor kid whose sister is about to marry rich. His new in-laws have an art collection and the kid is poking around and finds something hidden. Turns out to be this rare sculpture reported stolen decades previously. So the kid steals it. Then to make things okay for his sister's in-laws, he whips out a forgery of it in shop class before fencing it. In-laws are happy, kid buys his mom a house, sister gets married, everyone lives happily ever after. Aside, of course, from the crushing moral weight of committing theft in the interest of lifting your family out of poverty. The guy buying a Giacometti for €20,000 probably knows it's fake, too. But he's got plausible deniability - after all, he didn't fake it. And so long as his friends are impressed, he's good to go. I wouldn't own a Giacometti. I'm fond of my Magritte. And at least I know it's a reproduction of an actual Magritte that I'll probably never see, and neither will any of my friends.Guido S. even wrote a book, which he called "Diego's Revenge," and of which he had 300 copies printed. It tells the story, part truth and part fiction, of Diego Giacometti, a brother and assistant of the artist, who had established a secret cache of sculptures. According to the book, the brother had even removed "the results of Giacometti's work, and of long nights of struggle" from the studio and made castings of them, "which he took to the foundry, either on his own or after checking with Alberto."
"Anyone who believes he can buy a real Giacometti for €20,000 deserves to be duped. The art world is rotten."
