deepfake

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.

jesus christ

It's kinda cool the way that technology has provided novel ways for total ghouls to violate the dead.

To rob's point, I'm glad this high profile example is getting pushback so publicly and vociferously right away so maybe it will help stem the tide of further ghouls attempting this stuff.

i am cool with an ai version of my simulated voice living on after i'm dead, but i would like to produce the texts for it to speak right now while i'm still living

from now on, my life's work shall be my death's life

just point it to ilx tbh

that's true for all of us! hmmm

maybe this tech could specify certain years or decades that it should NOT draw upon for the text

ai is so smart and powerful now i'm sure it could be like, "hmmmm that sounds painful and awkward, imma skip that one"

If I were a famous public figure I would record tons of random footage/speeches/whatever to be used after I die, scenes for movies not yet written and so on. Heck, if Bruce Willis can record all his scenes in one day for boilerplate action movies, yet alone Yul Brynner for posthumous smoking PSAs, the sky is the limit. Like, whenever I was bored I'd record three minutes of myself talking about, I dunno, frogs or something and just add it to the pile. then after I die, if someone has a use for it and wants to pay my estate, go for it.

the painful ai rejection

xp josh if i understand correctly, bruce willis wouldn't even have to record him saying his scenes. they could just take the boilerplate action movie text and apply the voice of bruce willis to it.

"get in the car!"
"i'm fine"
"he's getting away!"
"fuck!"

bruce willis is sitting pretty right now in other words

the question is, would bruce's literary executor sign off on it

*voice of bruce's literary executor, formless but clearly heard in surround sound*

"yes, the willis estate hereby signs off on that"