"Deepfake" Videos Will Make CNN's #FakeNews 75% More Convincing

Bumped because Trump stomped it. And see update at the end. I'll just keep this up for another 20 minutes or so.

Commercially-available software makes it easy to produce decent fake videos. You can alter someone's lip movements to make it appear as they're saying something else, or put a digital mask of someone else's face on to a target face -- putting Nic Cage into movies he wasn't actually in is apparently a big Reddit gag now. (See the Superman one for much weirdness.)

The most popular current use is, of course, pornography, as pornography is always the first widespread use of any new communications technology. The deepfakers create many porn videos of "Scarlett Johanson" by just layering over a digital mask of her face on to a real pornographic actress.

Scarlet Johanson has declared that it's impossible to fight the deepfakes.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Johansson, who is Hollywood's highest-paid actress, spoke out about the practice. The Avengers star appears in many of the videos, including one that has been viewed over 1.5 million times.

CORRECTION: 1.5 million and one times.

"Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else's onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired," she said. "The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the Internet and its depravity is basically a lost cause [...] The Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself."

That's some sexy talk right there.

While commercially-available deepfake software produces video that looks wonky, more sophisticated software that's not yet available is a lot more convincing -- and getting better all the time.

At some point, there will be some attempted #FakeNews targeting a politician using this technology. It's hard to guess which media company will be responsible for pushing the first deepfakenews.

No it's not. It'll be CNN. Don't be stupid, you Stupid.

The Wall Street Journal has a longer piece on this technology, and our coming Fake Future.

Update: A pervert writes:

I think porn actresses are going to start be recruited for matching body/hair/head types to the "hot" Hollywood actresses of the period. They'll likely perform with green facepaint and white dots, or whatever makes the face-swapping tech work better. And it's gonna be an awesome gig if, y'know, a person is inclined to be a porn actress. You get the same money (though it would be less, I suppose) but won't have the social stigma of being known as a porn actress.

I don't know if the porn industry will court that kind of legal trouble -- unlike anonymous randos and nobodies, porn companies have some money and can be sued -- but the basic idea of anonymized porn work makes sense to me. Women can slap on a different (non-replica) face and, as this noxious pervert says, get paid while avoiding the stigma of being a known porno worker.

This pervert failed to point out a crucial computational hurdle that will have to be cleared: Jizz physics. And realistic cum-tumble modeling. And a way to avoid dick-clipping.

PS, can you digitally layer Mitt Romney's face on someone's snizz? Asking for a friend.

posted by Ace of Spades at 05:05 PM

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