Марк Дайс - The Liberal Media Industrial Complex

While deceptively edited video has been a problem and can cast people in a false light and twist their statements or place them out of context, the video tricks we’re now facing are far more sophisticated. They can make almost anyone appear to do or say almost anything—just like what happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man.

These fake videos are called “deepfakes” named after the deep learning of artificial intelligence algorithms that are used to create them. This same technology had been used dating back to the 1990s in order to make it appear that Forrest Gump shook hands with President John F. Kennedy, and made John Wayne look like he was handing off a six pack of Coors Light to someone in a commercial even though he had been dead for over ten years. 870

More recently it was used to digitally impose Paul Walker’s face onto another actor’s body to finish Fast and the Furious part 7 after he died in a car accident before the film was done being shot. 871But unfortunately this technology isn’t just being used for entertainment anymore, and people are starting to realize that in the wrong hands it can pose a tremendous danger.

In April 2018 comedian Jordan Peele released a video showing Barack Obama appearing to warn that, “We’re entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point at time — even if they would never say those things.” Obama went on to say, “So, for instance, they could have me say things like… President Trump is a total and complete dip shit.” 872

The video then cut to a split screen showing Obama on one side and Jordan Peele on the other, revealing that he was doing the voice for Obama since he does a pretty good impression, and he was also using real-time face mimicking software in order to match his lips and facial expressions onto a digitally recreated version of Obama. It was a clever PSA to bring this kind of technology to people’s attention, since at the time most people hadn’t heard of deepfakes.

Two years earlier, in 2016, researchers at Stanford University posted a video demonstrating their “Face2Face Real-time Face Capture” technology, showing how by using their software and an ordinary webcam they could map a person’s facial expressions onto George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. 873This may have been the same software Jordan Peele used for his video.

The following year a different group of researchers from the University of Washington created another fake Obama video showing him saying things that he has actually said in the past, but the video was completely synthetic and showed him in a different setting while making the statements. They released a paper explaining how they were able to do it. 874Deepfakes like this could easily change someone’s reaction to seeing or hearing something, giving a false impression as to how they feel about a certain event or issue; but this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Technology to manipulate video in such ways was once extremely expensive and required teams of people to produce, but today deepfakes can be made by amateurs on their home computers. SnapChat filters and Facebook messenger filters can now overlay different cartoon faces and other effects on someone’s face in real time.

In January of 2018 someone took a video of actress Amy Adams singing “I Will Survive” and swapped her face for that of Nicholas Cage’s. 875Then in January 2019 someone made one by taking a segment of Jennifer Lawrence speaking with reporters backstage after the Golden Globe awards and put Steve Buscemi’s face in place of hers. The video was so bizarre and realistic looking that it became the most viral deepfake video since Jordan Peele’s Obama video, and introduced the term “deepfake” to a much wider audience. 876A few days later Stephen Colbert had Steve Buscemi on as a guest and asked him if he’d seen the video. He joked that he had “never looked better,” but underneath the laughs appeared to be a concern about what this technology was now capable of. 877

In June 2019 a deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg was posted online showing him giving what looks to be an interview with CBS News, where he says, “Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures. I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.” 878

It was a publicity stunt for a futuristic art and technology exhibit in the UK, but also was meant to serve as a warning for what problems technology may cause in the near future. CBS tried to get the video removed from Facebook because the deepfake was made from an interview Zuckerberg gave to CBS News and “violated their trademark.” 879Facebook wrestled with whether or not to remove the deepfake videos, but chose not to take any action, but their existence sparked a difficult conversation, which is what the makers intended.

The “Spectre” exhibit also commissioned the creation of a deepfake of Kim Kardashian which looked and sounded extremely realistic, unlike the Zuckerberg one which was an obvious fake. This one looked and sounded just like Kim Kardashian bragging about the power social media companies have over their users’ data, and concluded, “I feel really blessed because I genuinely love the process of manipulating people online for money.” 880

Needless to say, she was not happy about it, and tried to have the video removed by filing copyright complaints against social media accounts that posted it. 881But these kind of satire videos are the least of celebrities’ concerns.

Just like many early Internet entrepreneurs were quick to use the emerging new technology to share porn— allowing people to access it from their home computer instead of having to go out and buy magazines or VHS tapes from some seedy adult video store—one of the early uses of deepfake technology was to make fake porn videos depicting famous celebrities like Gal Gadot ( Wonder Woman ), Daisy Ridley ( Star Wars ), and Scarlett Johansson ( The Horse Whisperer ).

Celebrity deepfake porn videos were soon banned by PornHub 882and Reddit where users were posting clips they had made of their favorite actresses. 883While most of the videos weren’t being passed off as actual sex tapes, their creation obviously caused concern for those actresses whose likeness is now appearing in realistic-looking porn videos. 884

Another concern is that since the software to create such fakes is widely available online, people could make fake sex tapes of someone in attempts to extort money from them, threatening to post the fakes online if they don’t pay up. Or scorned ex-lovers or those rejected by women could create deepfakes and post them online in order to “get back” at them. 885

When the Bush administration was planning for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the CIA reportedly came up with the idea to create a fake video appearing to be Saddam Hussein having sex with a teenage boy. “It would look like it was taken by a hidden camera. Very grainy, like it was a secret videotaping of a sex session,” a CIA official later admitted to the Washington Post . 886

The CIA also reportedly discussed making a fake video appearing as if Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants were sitting around a campfire drinking alcohol and talking about their “conquests with boys” as well, but another former CIA official with knowledge of the plan said, “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East — nobody cares. Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.” 887