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The use of deepfake technology to manipulate video and audio for malicious purposes — whether it's to stoke violence or defame politicians and journalists — is becoming a real threat. As these tools become more accessible and their products more realistic, how will they shape what we believe about the world? In a portentous talk, law professor Danielle Citron reveals how deepfakes magnify our distrust — and suggests approaches to safeguarding the truth.
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Dammit Corridorcrew
It would be good if the existence of deep fakes made people forevermore skeptical of the BS used to promote war.
Did you hear somebody has registered “Deepfakes Inc.” in Deleware?? We should shut down Delaware. 🙂
Would you say people are easier or harder to brainwash today compared to world war 2 era? Vietnam era? Iraq war era?
@Mike K I don’t think that is the right lense. I dont know what else might be, but I do think the world could use a new religion. 🙂
@Will B “new religion” is what the romans called christianity after paganism. As long as humans are writing the rules, it’s not gonna work.
@Sakeena yeah, cause Paganism worked really well. lololol. Romans gonna Catholocism. 🙂
“He who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”–Voltaire
Nice comment. Unfortunately our society is in deep decline.
Reminds me of 9/11!
Religions
Pseudo philosophy
Politics
Fairy tales
Pseudo science
Mainstream media
Everyday propaganda
Dogmas….
I like this one better. “As long as there are rogues and fools, there will be religious. Ours is unquestionably the most ridiculous and most absurd and bloodiest ever infected the world” VOLTAIRE
Also do y’all realise people have been photoshopping fake nudes since image editing was a thing ? Some of them even look pretty real. Wasn’t Photoshop considered as real as deepfakes are now ?
the difference is moving vs still image. vids r more believable
@chicblossom Ok but we’ll get used to deep fakes the same way we got used to PhotoShopped images.
An unconvincing forgery is not a threat. Photoshop almost never convinced anyone of anything. Deepfakes are a threat because they have potential to convince many, many ordinary people. But that’s not the biggest problem.
It’s not the fact that ‘stupid’/naïve people might believe lies. (They always do, anyway.) It’s the fact that ‘smart’/skeptical people won’t be able to (confidently) reach *any conclusions about anything.*
The possibility (resp., probability) of evidence forgery encumbers (resp., paralyzes) anyone who seeks truth.
Hence the uproar re: deepfakes.
@Daniel Steel
Very well said.
It’s exactly what I worry about regarding deepfake technology. Not even those who put time and effort in research and fact checking will be able to feel confident about anything anymore.
@Sopho Nax Why should they feel confident? faking videos has existed for years!
Aaahhh.. Daniel Citron, why did you have to do this talk? Im afraid youre going to jinx us
…and it is extremely dangerous to our democracy
People will learn to not give a damn about everything xD
Exactly. I don’t see it with bad eyes, humanity will be forced to evolve.
That’s the goal of manipulators. This way they can alter laws and values to push their agenda
@romullo bernardo – We haven’t evolved. We’re committing the same stupid mistakes that our ancestors did.
2019 B.C. – “We’ve got to sacrifice ourselves to change the weather!”
2019 A.D. – “We’ve got to sacrifice ourselves to change the weather!”
I think deepfakes will make a lot of waves in the beginning, when the average joe still don’t know that this sort of technology is out there, that it exists, but once it becomes a establish known fact that people and pretty much anyone can easily fake videos.. I don’t think it will be that different from what already happens today, from just making up some fake twitter printscreen, or whatever.
As it becomes a fact that anyone can do that, videos and images will have as much value as texts.
Yeah, we already have grown up knowing that photoshopping is a thing, this is just more things to learn to accept as part of our lives. And let’s not forget there can be beneficial applications, and malicious applications to almost any new tool.
Even then, to deepfake you need A LOT of footage and EVEN MORE training. Your average joe will be immune for the most part. Youtubers and other popular figures, however, will suffer. But then there are other things to consider like body shape, height, environment, lighting etc. It’s not that simple, and since it’s an edited footage there will always be a way to verify it.
7:36 — The risk of disbelieving the truth — “what we call the Liar’s Dividend” — The risk that liars will invoke “that was a deepfake” to escape accountability for their wrongdoing.
10:42 — The law has some practical impediments — 10:50 — “If a perpetrator (of deepfakes) lives outside of the country where the vicitim lives, then you may not be able to insist that the perpetrator come in to local courts to face justice. So we’re going to need a coordinated international response”. There are personal responsibilities as well to surface up deepfakes that the law is not able to determine.
This is a really tough nut to crack — Cooperation from social media companies to spend the money to use human knowledge and context to help determine harmful deepfakes, and commitment to remove them from their platforms — International law agreements and cooperation — Education of citizens to learn and recognize the “liar’s dividend” ability of politicians and others to pollute the truth by branding authentic sound & video as fake news or a deep fake — Cooperation of citizens to help surface deepfakes — New legislation — Better training of law enforcement. I appreciate this well-presented presentation of both the escalating threat, injury and harm deepfakes can foist upon innocent victims — and the array of tools needed to control deepfakes that can cause deep personal harm.
You know “Pravda” means literally “Truth”. They had nice law enforcement. And a nice Internationale.
Here’s a question: assume we reach a point where video/audio recordings are no longer considered to be 100% verifiable evidence of wrongdoing because of the spread of deepfakes and voice generators. What do we then consider to be the gold standard of undoubtable proof?
I’m not saying this as a negative or as a “we must stick with video/audio.” I’m asking this because I don’t know what evidence cannot be forged in the information age, especially after the news media, images, and now videos are no longer 90% or more reliable.
deepfake precludes any and all audio/visual “evidence” will never be allowed as evidence in any court of law.
@Mallow Marsh which government agency of corruption will declare it fake.
enforcing it as a law for every video uploaders & creators seems to be the only solution for me, any other ideas?
Sad fact is these types of disordered personalities, malignant narcissists, who purposely manufacture fake stories to ultimately undermine and devalue the truth. This is how these people begin to confuse people. It’s NOT the fake news… It’s the misinformation that’s put out there to confuse others. This constant moving of the goal posts overwhelms people. So when the REAL TRUTH is present, people have a hard time knowing what’s real and isn’t. Malignant normalicy is another narcissistic technique of repeating falsehoods so many time that people then take them for honest and real. You can repeat a lie 1000 times and it’s still a lie. Problem is, most people are either too lazy to uncover the truth. Laws are I credibly slow in catching up with technology.
It’s not deepfakes that threw undoubtable proof to the wayside.
Great talk however, she keeps calling that lady Rhana a minority but that Indian women is most definitely not a minority in a country of 1 billion people!
She’s a woman. Women are definitely minorities in India.
You know what has and still does undermine truth and democracy?
The public who lets corrupt individuals in positions of power and influence do as they please and with their actions affect us all.
Like George Carlin said “what if it’s not the politicians that suck? What if it’s the public that sucks, yeah, maybe the people suck, how about that!”
“Our sense that the banking system is stable.” was she born after 2008? Or is she just naive?
This video will not age well.
I doubt that Chinese Technology Companies will cooperate to ban this technology.
There’s theories floating around that the wave of deepfakes are out to accustom the public to not believing them so when real videos do come out of politicians committing crimes they can blame deep fake
Makes sense
Maybe just don’t believe everything you see on tv?
Ohh please, like photoshop ruin the democracy..
This is no excuse for censorship.
Outlawing the malicious use of this technology is going to be incredibly hard.
Once a fake video is out there, you can’t take it off the internet. You can’t undo the damage, even if you arrest the person who did it.
And what if you hire people from other countries to make the videos for you? What if they’re as anonymous as can be? Are we gonna have to ban all internet anonymity, worldwide?
Maybe that’ll be the only solution. But is that even possible? And if it is, it’ll cause many new problems!
This is gonna get very messy.
Anonymity is responsible for much corruption…