3 Months ago I posted here of how a research project had demonstrated that they could realistically manipulate a video of a human speaker so that the face moves to copy the face of an actor - opening the door to fake videos of anyone saying anything at all.. Now a new twist, Vice reports of AI assisted software that replaces faces in videos with the faces of others.. Which, predictably, started out with putting 'celebrity' faces onto porn 'actor' bodies... But this version can be run at home with minimal skill!
As a quick example, this demonstration of the new software presents Adolf Hitler's face mapped onto Mauricio Macri - the Argentine president -
While this example is quite crude, it demonstrates the principle in use.
This video from my previous post is actually more capable than the system mentioned by Vice and as you can see, contains a demonstration of Donald Trump being manipulated by the facial and vocal movements of an actor - the possibilities for fraud and false prosecution of innocent people is huge:
The piece from Vice news makes clear that the freely available 'FakeApp' software can be used with minimal skill to realistically replace the face of someone in a video with someone else's face. Given that replacing someone's voice is not part of the app, this renders it's uses mainly to clips that do not include voice - if realism is the aim - which is perhaps part of why porn has been the main use case so far. However, it does not take much of a stretch of the imagination to think up numerous examples where this technology would be used to 'get away with murder' or even have someone punished for rape or child abuse.
What does it mean when a video can be made at home that shows a realistic scene of you appearing to really murder or rape someone - when you are innocent? This is the reality we have now reached and it needs to be addressed urgently.
One of the many problems with this is that while it might be possible to create software that can forensically analyse and identify videos that have been faked in this way, we are left with needing to trust the creators of the software to know whether it has itself been manipulated! This means that if we rely on such software to 'protect' people in court from such fake videos (assuming this can even be done at all) then those 'expert witnesses' who may be involved in running such software only need to be implanted or bribed/blackmailed themselves and suddenly the entire court system becomes a tool of whoever is doing the blackmailing. The outcome would literally be a George Orwell style nightmare and even worse, most people might never even realise.
I think the only valid solution to this from a judicial perspective at this point is to reject video evidence in court and in general - but is that likely to occur? How many innocent people will be beaten in the streets and killed in countries where that still occurs, based on fake videos? It's a terrifying prospect.
As always, the real solution needed is for us all to learn to heal, balance and evolve to the point where we share a truly enlightened society where such crimes and fakery simply never occur because we are all aware and wise enough to know we don't benefit from them... We have a way to go!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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