Fogbow

There are now businesses that sell fake people. On the website Generated.Photos, you can buy a “unique, worry-free” fake person for $2.99, or 1,000 people for $1,000. If you just need a couple of fake people — for characters in a video game, or to make your company website appear more diverse — you can get their photos for free on ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com. Adjust their likeness as needed; make them old or young or the ethnicity of your choosing. If you want your fake person animated, a company called Rosebud.AI can do that and can even make them talk.

These simulated people are starting to show up around the internet, used as masks by real people with nefarious intent: spies who don an attractive face in an effort to infiltrate the intelligence community; right-wing propagandists who hide behind fake profiles, photo and all; online harassers who troll their targets with a friendly visage.

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The creation of these types of fake images only became possible in recent years thanks to a new type of artificial intelligence called a generative adversarial network. In essence, you feed a computer program a bunch of photos of real people. It studies them and tries to come up with its own photos of people, while another part of the system tries to detect which of those photos are fake.

The back-and-forth makes the end product ever more indistinguishable from the real thing. The portraits in this story were created by The Times using GAN software that was made publicly available by the computer graphics company Nvidia.

'Spooky' AI tool brings dead relatives' photos to life
Friday, 26 February 2021 15:51 GMT
Deep Nostalgia a tool by genealogy firm MyHeritage turns still photos into lively videos, adding to global debate around deepfake technologies
By Umberto Bacchi

Feb 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Like the animated paintings that adorn the walls of Harry Potter's school, a new online tool promises to bring portraits of dead relatives to life, stirring debate about the use of technology to impersonate people. Genealogy company MyHeritage launched its "Deep Nostalgia" feature earlier this week, allowing users to turn stills into short videos showing the person in the photograph smiling, winking and nodding. "Seeing our beloved ancestors' faces come to life ... lets us imagine how they might have been in reality, and provides a profound new way of connecting to our family history," MyHeritage founder Gilad Japhet said in a statement.

Developed with Israeli computer vision firm D-ID, Deep Nostalgia uses deep learning algorithms to animate images with facial expressions that were based on those of MyHeritage employees. Some of the company's users took to Twitter on Friday to share the animated images of their deceased relatives, as well as moving depictions of historical figures, including Albert Einstein and Ancient Egypt's lost Queen Nefertiti. "Takes my breath away. This is my grandfather who died when I was eight. @MyHeritage brought him back to life. Absolutely crazy," wrote Twitter user Jenny Hawran.

While most expressed amazement, others described the feature as "spooky" and said it raised ethical questions. "The photos are enough. The dead have no say in this," tweeted user Erica Cervini. From chatbots to virtual reality, the tool is the latest innovation seeking to bring the dead to life through technology. Last year U.S. rapper Kanye West famously gifted his wife Kim Kardashian a hologram of her late father congratulating her on her birthday and on marrying "the most, most, most, most, most genius man in the whole world".

'ANIMATING THE PAST'
The trend has opened up all sorts of ethical and legal questions, particularly around consent and the opportunity to blur reality by recreating a virtual doppelganger of the living. Elaine Kasket a psychology professor at the University of Wolverhampton in Britain who authored a book on the "digital afterlife", said that while Deep Nostalgia was not necessarily "problematic", it sat "at the top of a slippery slope". "When people start overwriting history or sort of animating the past ... You wonder where that ends up," she said. MyHeritage acknowledges on its website that the technology can be "a bit uncanny" and its use "controversial", but said steps have been taken to prevent abuses. "The Deep Nostalgia feature includes hard-coded animations that are intentionally without any speech and therefore cannot be used to fake any content or deliver any message," MyHeritage public relations director Rafi Mendelsohn said in a statement.

Yet, images alone can convey meaning, said Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State University's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. "Imagine somebody took a picture of the Last Supper and Judas is now winking at Mary Magdalene - what kind of implications that can have," Hussain told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence (AI) animations could be use to make someone appear as though they were doing things they might not be happy about, such as rolling their eyes or smiling at a funeral, he added. Mendelsohn of MyHeritage said using photos of a living person without their consent was a breach of the company's terms and conditions, adding that videos were clearly marked with AI symbols to differentiate them from authentic recordings. "It is our ethical responsibility to mark such synthetic videos clearly and differentiate them from real videos," he said.

In charging documents, the Hilltown Township Police Department allege that Raffaela Spone, 50, harassed several of the staff and members of the Victory Vipers cheer squad in Doylestown.

After the first victim came forward alleging cyber harassment, several others came forward too, police said, and at least one victim received a message encouraging suicide.

Spone allegedly created digitally manipulated images and videos — known as deepfakes — that falsely showed her daughter's teammates drinking, vaping, and posing nude, all activities that would get them kicked off the squad.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told NBC News on Sunday that the use of deepfake images was "one of the more disturbing aspects of this case, because it would seem to me this technology is available to anyone."

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 11:49 am Pennsylvania cheer squad mom allegedly cyberbullied minors with deepfakes, officials say
Raffaela Spone is accused of using deepfake images and videos to bully several of her daughter's cheer squad teammates, according to Bucks County prosecutors.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pe ... y-n1261055

In charging documents, the Hilltown Township Police Department allege that Raffaela Spone, 50, harassed several of the staff and members of the Victory Vipers cheer squad in Doylestown.

After the first victim came forward alleging cyber harassment, several others came forward too, police said, and at least one victim received a message encouraging suicide.

Spone allegedly created digitally manipulated images and videos — known as deepfakes — that falsely showed her daughter's teammates drinking, vaping, and posing nude, all activities that would get them kicked off the squad.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told NBC News on Sunday that the use of deepfake images was "one of the more disturbing aspects of this case, because it would seem to me this technology is available to anyone."

northland10 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:38 pm

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 11:49 am Pennsylvania cheer squad mom allegedly cyberbullied minors with deepfakes, officials say
Raffaela Spone is accused of using deepfake images and videos to bully several of her daughter's cheer squad teammates, according to Bucks County prosecutors.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pe ... y-n1261055

In charging documents, the Hilltown Township Police Department allege that Raffaela Spone, 50, harassed several of the staff and members of the Victory Vipers cheer squad in Doylestown.

After the first victim came forward alleging cyber harassment, several others came forward too, police said, and at least one victim received a message encouraging suicide.

Spone allegedly created digitally manipulated images and videos — known as deepfakes — that falsely showed her daughter's teammates drinking, vaping, and posing nude, all activities that would get them kicked off the squad.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told NBC News on Sunday that the use of deepfake images was "one of the more disturbing aspects of this case, because it would seem to me this technology is available to anyone."

What is it with some parents, and Bucks County?

sugar magnolia wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:42 pm

northland10 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:38 pm

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 11:49 am Pennsylvania cheer squad mom allegedly cyberbullied minors with deepfakes, officials say
Raffaela Spone is accused of using deepfake images and videos to bully several of her daughter's cheer squad teammates, according to Bucks County prosecutors.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pe ... y-n1261055

What is it with some parents, and Bucks County?

Or cheerleader moms.

northland10 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 4:38 pm

Volkonski wrote: ↑Mon Mar 15, 2021 11:49 am Pennsylvania cheer squad mom allegedly cyberbullied minors with deepfakes, officials say
Raffaela Spone is accused of using deepfake images and videos to bully several of her daughter's cheer squad teammates, according to Bucks County prosecutors.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pe ... y-n1261055

In charging documents, the Hilltown Township Police Department allege that Raffaela Spone, 50, harassed several of the staff and members of the Victory Vipers cheer squad in Doylestown.

After the first victim came forward alleging cyber harassment, several others came forward too, police said, and at least one victim received a message encouraging suicide.

Spone allegedly created digitally manipulated images and videos — known as deepfakes — that falsely showed her daughter's teammates drinking, vaping, and posing nude, all activities that would get them kicked off the squad.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub told NBC News on Sunday that the use of deepfake images was "one of the more disturbing aspects of this case, because it would seem to me this technology is available to anyone."

What is it with some parents, and Bucks County?

Shayan Sardarizadeh @Shayan86 wrote: This AI-generated video, circulating on Russian Telegram, claims to show a France 24 broadcast in which a presenter announces President Macron has cancelled a scheduled visit to Ukraine over fears of an assassination attempt.

France 24 never aired this, it's totally fake.