Does this Joe Rogan deepfake mean video evidence is officially dead?

www.inverse.com/ ^ | 12/2/2019 | thor benson

[bitt]

Experts say deepfakes will be used to swing the 2020 election.

deepfake video featuring an actor made to look and sound like the comedian Joe Rogan surfaced last week, stunning for its audio and visual accuracy. And Rogan was a great choice: He’s put out hundreds of hours-long video podcasts. There is a lot of material to work with.

If you’re not yet aware of what a deepfake is in the first place, it’s a way of using artificial intelligence to create fraudulent audio or video that sounds and/or looks like a particular person. In this case, we’re seeing a fake video of Rogan saying things he never said.

Rogan’s life in the public eye makes it easy to train an A.I system to pick up on the subtleties of how he speaks. It’d be significantly harder to do something like this with the average person, but this technology is advancing pretty quickly.

“The replica of Rogan’s voice … was produced using a text-to-speech deep learning system they developed called RealTalk, which generates life-like speech using only text inputs,” is the explanation from A.I. startup Dessa, which created the video.

The company had previously created an A.I. system that could mimic Rogan’s voice, and now they’ve created a deepfake video that’s relatively convincing.

After Dessa released its audio deepfake of Joe Rogan in May, the team started working on making a realistic deepfake video to go alongside the audio, and what they’ve created isn’t bad.

[NELSON111]

Yep-BUT-in the world in which we live-the lie will spread like a wildfire and the truth will never catch up to it. I see it all the time on social media. I see out and out lies that are easily refuted posted by both sides of the political spectrum-conservatives and liberals about the other side all the time. All one has to do is just do a little research to disprove it. Yet-its shared and viewed by millions and it’s not near and convincing as a deep fake video. Something like that? Shoot-you’d never get the real truth out to all the people who were convinced that it was real.

That’s how propaganda works.

[Captain Rhino]

Six months between the deepfake audio and deepfake video. Hardly real time...yet.

What the really smart people at these deepfake AI companies fail to realize that the very success of their creations will lead to it being banned (fraud/public nuisance/etc.).

And it will also probably be the foundation of the movement to permanently neuter the more sophisticated applications of AI because they are too easily exploited for illegitimate purposes.

And please resist the temptation to say AI can never be used this way or that way in the real world... because tomorrow, or the day after, some other relatively unknown IT developer will show up to demonstrate that it can do precisely the things it is not supposed to be able to do.

Of course, there will be real money to be made by those software and hardware firms that will be able to detect deepfakes in real time and for those firms which can produce certified true video and audio recordings that cannot be deepfaked using AI. (Assuming that is even possible.)

[UnwashedPeasant]

"I would think that there are ways for forensic people to determine authenticity."

Anyone with Adobe Illustrator could see that the Obama birth certificate was fake.

90% of the public probably still thinks it was real.

People are easily fooled by fake news.

[thoughtomator]

Rumor has it there is some detailed video of certain Democrats in compromising positions with children. Jeff Epstein didn’t kill himself.

[easternsky]

I think they are getting ready to expose lots on this very thing, that is why this is being brought out now.

[Tallguy]

Maybe so, but the public is easy to stampede with something like this. Create an emergency then roll out a video?

[VTenigma]

I’m kinda sick of “interesting”.

[EEGator]

I think who you hang around with matters.
Most of the comedians he hangs with are also foul mouthed.

[KobraKai]

That may be true for now. I would counter that verification of authenticity is not as important as the media firestorm created by the release of the deep fake video. Look at the damage done to Nick Sandman, or any other fake news before any authentication is done. Peoples lives are ruined before they even have a chance to defend themselves.

[just Grace]

I’m confident that Adumb Schitt is funding this deep fake venture.

[higgmeister]

Six months between the deepfake audio and deepfake video. Hardly real time...yet.

What the really smart people at these deepfake AI companies fail to realize that the very success of their creations will lead to it being banned (fraud/public nuisance/etc.).

And it will also probably be the foundation of the movement to permanently neuter the more sophisticated applications of AI because they are too easily exploited for illegitimate purposes.

And please resist the temptation to say AI can never be used this way or that way in the real world... because tomorrow, or the day after, some other relatively unknown IT developer will show up to demonstrate that it can do precisely the things it is not supposed to be able to do.

Of course, there will be real money to be made by those software and hardware firms that will be able to detect deepfakes in real time and for those firms which can produce certified true video and audio recordings that cannot be deepfaked using AI. (Assuming that is even possible.)

I'm retired from Verizon with 40 years in telecommunications. I've been saying for at least twenty years that we will get to a point that people will call Disney to make reservations at Disney World and talk directly to an animated Mickey Mouse taking all the information. The uses of this technology will be myriad without any bounds. Even some cloistered individuals will present to the world as they wish with no one seeing them face-to-face. It does not take a Futurist to recognise some trends.