deepfake

one vote for the creeps

you just know this is going to be misused for evil/political purposes and "oh yeah? prove it isn't you" etc

― StanM, Friday, February 26, 2021 2:04 AM (yesterday)

In a world where a significant number of people believe the moon landing was faked, I don't think deepfakes are really cause for political* alarm. Photoshop and CGI didn't usher us into a hyperreal nightmare where we're constantly being deluded by fake images. If I've learned one thing from the past few years, it's that lies don't need to be partic convincing for lots of people to believe them.

* meanwhile they have been used extensively to harass and exploit women

I note that almost every source photo is not smiling, but the faked animation always has the subject look at the viewer and give a slight smile. The overall effect is of someone enjoying a private and intimate moment with you. Seems much too predictable to be a coincidence. That level of emotional manipulation of the viewer is creepier than the fact that the faces move somewhat realistically.

SOMEbody read Harry Potter

I signed up to that my heritage thing, just to try it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyl9mh8mvx4

^ very touching and a source of emotional comfort for you, I'm sure

That

is horrifying. Thank you.

I also plugged in one of the freaky photos from the cursed images thread, but the results were too awful to share.

we need a lot more of these please

lol

thanks, forks. <3

This is really weird stuff. pic.twitter.com/Wo6hlb8Aiv

— Harry McCracken (@harrymccracken) February 28, 2021

Weird coincidence, I just came here to post this:

Frederick Douglass, the mighty abolitionist, was the single most photographed person in the United States during the nineteenth century. Here's how he might've looked in motion. Brace yourself and press play. pic.twitter.com/HOxDK7jGyh

— La Marr Jurelle Bruce (@Afromanticist) February 28, 2021

This technology might really take off if they're able to iron out that thing where it looks like the person has a school of jellyfish writhing under their skin every time their head moves.

I think in this case it's not really animated, per se, but hundreds of photos of his face sort of stitched together into a simulation of motion, like a 3-D flip book.

the douglass is very uncanny valley

i think the myheritage thing i gonna blow up this week, nyt trend piece ahoy

Really weird that MyHeritage of all companies beat Adobe or some other design/tech group to this.

Joseph Bloor lives! The most handsome man in Toronto history brought to life by this wild new #DeepNostalgia animation tool from MyHeritage... https://t.co/cQOXjVjDqg pic.twitter.com/QBzdlwxNfV

— Adam Bunch (@TODreamsProject) February 26, 2021

Okay, emerging market space: MyHeritage.com, but for dick pics

That throb in all the wrong ways/places

"Damn, great-great-grandpa Jebediah was HUNG!"

this new technology really is an amazing breakthrough in taking historical photos and making it look like the person is in an elevator awkwardly trying to avoid smalltalk

Yup. The animation adds movement to the photo, but they are completely empty and meaningless motions. They reveal nothing about the person that was not already in the photo. They just blink and strike slightly different poses.

Okay, emerging market space: MyHeritage.com, but for dick pics

― chillin' like Emperor Maximilian (Ye Mad Puffin), Sunday, February 28, 2021 4:44 PM (three hours ago)

That throb in all the wrong ways/places

― Chokeslamming A Memory (Old Lunch), Sunday, February 28, 2021 5:13 PM (two hours ago)

Wait, did that dick smile at me?

that fred douglass tweet has a whole bunch of others in the thread including this particularly uncanny one of a young Ida B Welles

pic.twitter.com/3UKOjBtLNu

— Queena (@luvscure1) February 28, 2021

anyways, as promised, this is blowing up
https://twitter.com/search?q=myheritage

Some of these are absolutely killing me

So I ran a film still of Nicolas Cage through MyHeritage's Deep Nostalgia thing. pic.twitter.com/y0kq0MtLIp

— Mark Yarm (@markyarm) February 28, 2021

this myHeritage thing is unquestionably one of the signs of the apocalypse pic.twitter.com/RxRZLUioEg

— Tony Corsentino (@corsent) March 1, 2021

The portraits with weird expressions perfectly illustrate how this software is simultaneously sophisticated, complex, shallow and perfunctory.

this myHeritage thing is unquestionably one of the signs of the apocalypse

Still more lifelike than the real Pete though.

I did one of my late grandmother and it clicked so i called my mother and explained to her what this is and then asked if she wanted to see it and she was like why not? Then i hit send and waited on the phone for her to click through and i hear her scream OH MY GOD so I am afraid I just traumatized my mother.

i think the myheritage thing i gonna blow up this week, nyt trend piece ahoy

― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Sunday, February 28, 2021 9:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Already got a sore thumb just this weekend blocking everyone slinging this 'OMG LOOK AT THIS' into my tl ffs. The thinkpieces and longreads are being cranked out at top speed as we speak.

xp The Good Son

every single one of these posted in the thread is making me lol irl

inevitably crashed

Good one:

Ran Donald Sutherland (from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, natch) thru Deep Nostalgia and it totally caught the creepiness of this technology... pic.twitter.com/yvHrnB3HXk

— 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕟 𝕋. 𝕄𝕒𝕟 (@swmerrell) March 1, 2021

wombo is amusing

/r/paradolia + Wombo = My weekend plans pic.twitter.com/r0lkBODPbb

— David Eisner (@DavidGEisner) March 11, 2021

I’m uncomfortable @WOMBO pic.twitter.com/6FERAp2zyB

— (trsh) birschbox (@birschbox) March 11, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/22/european-mps-targeted-by-deepfake-video-calls-imitating-russian-opposition

Dutch MPs fell for it as well

The poor resolution on video calls would explain in part why the prank wasn’t immediately apparent to the targets.

seems like a misguided word in this situation

you know what? fuck this

thanks I hate it https://t.co/xuRftW7p4y pic.twitter.com/f08wHXuroE

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 15, 2021

fuck

really awful

We can have a documentary ethics panel afterward

If you want

Even worse, the director claimed that he checked with his widow and literary executor first and, uh:

I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that. https://t.co/CypDvc1sBP

— Ottavia (@OttaviaBourdain) July 16, 2021

cool, we're only a few steps removed from Gotcha documentaries that intentionally make dead celebrities say things they actually never said to ruin their legacies.

kudos to Ottavia for shutting down the "it was blessed" lie

yeah im not a big expert on bourdain but he didnt strike me as a "please fake my voice" type of dude

Same and hopefully the lie sparks some real outrage about the technique in general. Frankly I don't think it would mitigate things to have gotten permission from survivors anyway. Like is this something to now specify in your will?

The director sounds like a total asshole tbrr: https://www.gq.com/story/anthony-bourdain-morgan-neville-roadrunner-documentary

In that context, I was little surprised by how much you decided to lean into drawing a parallel between his trip to the Congo and Apocalypse Now.

That story, to me, was about, Is he Willard or is he Kurtz? Is he the rational journalist? Or is he the one who has become the protagonist and gone insane? I feel like that’s the dialectic he wrestled with whether the story took place in the Congo or anywhere. I actually think that episode is one of the best depictions of life in central Africa that’s ever been on American television, but that’s the part I was leaning into and, yeah, it’s dancing up against some pretty racist tropes.