Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. We used to say seeing is believing,
Speaker 1: but that was before the invention of deep fakes. Increasingly
Speaker 1: affordable technology can actually create manufactured audio and video that
Speaker 1: no human eye or ear will be able to distinguish
Speaker 1: from the real thing. Does that mean we can't trust
Speaker 1: our eyes anymore, that we'll have to develop a pervasive
Speaker 1: sense of insecurity about what's actually true? Or could it
Speaker 1: open the door to something a little healthier, like a
Speaker 1: modest skepticism or a world where we will be more
Speaker 1: cautious about what we believe. To discuss these hard questions,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by Danielle Citron, a professor at the Boston
Speaker 1: University's School of Law. Danielle is the vice president of
Speaker 1: the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, which is a nonprofit devoted
Speaker 1: to the protection of civil rights and liberties in the
Speaker 1: digital age. She works very closely with lawmakers, law enforcers,
Speaker 1: and big social media platforms. She's written extensively about deep fakes,
Speaker 1: and in June twenty nineteen, she testified before the House
Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee on the subject. Danielle, I'm just so thrilled
Speaker 1: that you're here to talk to us about deep fakes.
Speaker 1: So let's just start with some definitions for those who
Speaker 1: are just encountering deep fakes for the first time over
Speaker 1: the last few months. What counts as a deep fake
Speaker 1: in your definition, deep fakes is involves machine learning technology
Speaker 1: that manipulates or fabricates out of sort of digital whole
Speaker 1: cloth video and audio recordings that show people doing and
Speaker 1: saying things that they never dinner said. So they seem
Speaker 1: really authentic and realistic, but they're totally false. And they
Speaker 1: look really good, don't they. You know, right now, the
Speaker 1: technology is still pretty much developing, so they look good.
Speaker 1: They're not perfect. If you look closely enough, you can
Speaker 1: sometimes see some of the flaws, even just to the
Speaker 1: human eye, and technologists can easily identify, for the most
Speaker 1: part that there are some flaws that show it's not real.
Speaker 1: It's that what's going to happen in the next six
Speaker 1: to nine months is that the technology is it's advancing
Speaker 1: so rapidly, so soon enough technologists think it's going to
Speaker 1: be really hard, if not impossible, to detect or discern
Speaker 1: the difference between what's fake and what's real, And that's
Speaker 1: when we're going to run into serious trouble when that happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when that happens, that means that any public figure,
Speaker 1: or not just a public figure, any person could be
Speaker 1: depicted in a relatively convincing looking video clip as saying
Speaker 1: we're doing something that they never said or did. So
Speaker 1: we have to, one way or another start preparing ourselves
Speaker 1: for that for that world. I guess is there any credible,
Speaker 1: realistic way just to ban this technology? I mean, could
Speaker 1: this just be a piece of technology that was flat
Speaker 1: out prohibited. I mean, I'm not allowed to have a
Speaker 1: surfaced air missile in my backyard, so why do I
Speaker 1: have to be able to have this on my computer? Right? No,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great question about you know, the
Speaker 1: difference between single use technologies whose only function is essentially
Speaker 1: illegality in your hands, right if you had a serviced airbistle.
Speaker 1: Deep fakes are different because you know, we can make
Speaker 1: deep fakes for good, we can make deep fakes to
Speaker 1: create art. You know, there's a deep fake of President
Speaker 1: Obama teaching us about the phenomenon of deep fakes. We're
Speaker 1: entering an era in which our enemies can make it
Speaker 1: look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time,
Speaker 1: even if they would never say those things. And so
Speaker 1: you can imagine so many interesting ways that deep fakes
Speaker 1: can help teach history. There's a man who has als
Speaker 1: and he sort of beerheaded the use of the technology
Speaker 1: to create audio that matches his thoughts so that others
Speaker 1: can hear him speak because he's unable to speak now.
Speaker 1: And there's a story about a man who's a quadriplegic
Speaker 1: who can't make love to his wife, and they used
Speaker 1: photographs of him to create a deep fake sex video
Speaker 1: of heat consentually and his wife so they can see
Speaker 1: themselves making love. So there are all sorts of ways
Speaker 1: that deep fakes can be pro social. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the question is should we ban the technology? And I
Speaker 1: would say we're going to have some problems with banning
Speaker 1: it for all sorts of practical reasons, like it's cats
Speaker 1: out of the bag. I don't think we can ban it,
Speaker 1: and I don't think we should ban it. It sounds
Speaker 1: like in the world that you're describing, we get very
Speaker 1: quickly to a category that you've written a lot about
Speaker 1: and that's a very complicated and contentious topic. And that's
Speaker 1: the topic of consent. You know, in the case of
Speaker 1: the person suffering from als that you mentioned, it's not
Speaker 1: just that they could create a video, but I suppose
Speaker 1: they could create an avatar, and then the man's wife
Speaker 1: could consentually have virtual sex with him, and they would
Speaker 1: be they would be happy about that, and we would
Speaker 1: perceive that as a pro social result. The problem arises
Speaker 1: when it's an image of a person taken without his
Speaker 1: or her consent. So are we at least in this realm,
Speaker 1: the realm of let's call it sex and deep fakes
Speaker 1: before we get to politics and deep fakes and other
Speaker 1: kinds of deep fakes. Is this a realm where we
Speaker 1: need to fall back on the familiar, albeit imperfect rules
Speaker 1: that we're used to using to regulate sexual conduct. I mean,
Speaker 1: sexual conduct itself is something that we see as pro social,
Speaker 1: except if it's not consensual, then it's very much antisocial
Speaker 1: and it's rape and it's a crime. It's true that
Speaker 1: with deep fakes, as with real life physical interactions, so
Speaker 1: often where the rubber hits the road, and where it's
Speaker 1: legally enormatively significant is where the person does not consent.
Speaker 1: It's much in the way that we think of sexual
Speaker 1: interactions that are physical between two individuals or three or
Speaker 1: whoever many when we're talking about video and audio, much
Speaker 1: as the way there's a big difference between porn and obscenity, right,
Speaker 1: or porn and non porn. It all has to do
Speaker 1: with consent. So I'm a pornography go for it if
Speaker 1: that's what you want to do. But if you are
Speaker 1: made into a sex object without your consent, then by
Speaker 1: my lights, it's something that we can regulate and should regulate.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is an important and significant developing area
Speaker 1: of law, and I want to ask you what I
Speaker 1: think is the natural question about that, which is, how
Speaker 1: do you draw the line between forms of fiction that
Speaker 1: have always implicated taking a person's image or their identity,
Speaker 1: and which historically we've treated as protected by freedom of
Speaker 1: expression from what you're setting out to prohibit. So Curtis
Speaker 1: Sittenfeld writes a novel, pretty good novel about Laura buk
Speaker 1: the former First Lady, and you know, she's more or
Speaker 1: less appropriated her whole character for the purposes of the novel.
Speaker 1: And it's not a sound a pornographic novel by stention
Speaker 1: the imagination. But such a novel could include sex or
Speaker 1: other forms of intimacy and depicted literarily, and we think
Speaker 1: of that as protected speech in some way. How would
Speaker 1: how do you think about drawing that kind of line?
Speaker 1: So a few things. The first is that audio and
Speaker 1: video are different from text in important ways. No audio
Speaker 1: and video have this visceral hold on us. We assume
Speaker 1: that they're true because we trust what our eyes and
Speaker 1: ears are telling us, Whereas how human beings respond to
Speaker 1: text is it's mediated in many respects through our thoughts,
Speaker 1: and so unlike audio and video, which react, we react
Speaker 1: to it in a way that it bypasses thinking. We
Speaker 1: just immediately assume it is true. It has a different
Speaker 1: kind of impact than text does. So I think that's
Speaker 1: the first difference between the novel, which imagines Laura Bush
Speaker 1: doing and saying things, versus video that represents to the
Speaker 1: world that it actually happened. Right. One is clearly fiction.
Speaker 1: It has to be mediated by our thoughts. We recognize
Speaker 1: it's being conveyed as fiction. And by contrast, audio and
Speaker 1: video in the deep fake context. So I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about audio and video that is clearly parody, and that
Speaker 1: we are using in ways that may clear and is.
Speaker 1: Let's pretend there's a label on it that says this
Speaker 1: is a parody. We're talking about audio and video that's
Speaker 1: designed to hide itself as false. It's being passed off
Speaker 1: as real, and the way we human beings perceive audio
Speaker 1: and video is as if it is a true representation
Speaker 1: of things that have happened in the world, as if
Speaker 1: it's real evidence. So that is I think one really
Speaker 1: important piece of why digital impersonations using audio and video
Speaker 1: that not only a powerful impact and therefore can have
Speaker 1: significant harms, it's how the creators are passing them off
Speaker 1: as real rather than as fiction. We see this play
Speaker 1: out with defamation. We can be as opinionated as we
Speaker 1: want to be and everyone knows it's what we think.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to factual falsehoods that we're saying
Speaker 1: are true, we can punish those. So that's another piece
Speaker 1: of it why there's a big difference between the deep
Speaker 1: fake that's passing itself off as real. Soon we won't
Speaker 1: even be able to tell the difference between fake and
Speaker 1: real unless we do some real serious journalists digging and
Speaker 1: where someone was at a particular time versus the novel, Daniel,
Speaker 1: there's several really fascinating things and what you just said,
Speaker 1: and I want to break it up into pieces if
Speaker 1: we could, so I want to start with this question
Speaker 1: of the disclaimer or how the information is presented on
Speaker 1: the way you were describing now, it sounds like, though,
Speaker 1: if someone produces a video where they take my image
Speaker 1: and then they do something with me that I don't
Speaker 1: want to have done, you know, they put me into
Speaker 1: a sex video or something like that, if they put
Speaker 1: a little note on it that says disclaimer, this is
Speaker 1: a deep fake, it's not Feldman, then in principle it
Speaker 1: sounds like maybe wouldn't be covered by the prohibitions that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And my instinct is that that wouldn't
Speaker 1: be very satisfactory. If we're concern is about the appropriation
Speaker 1: of my identity, then a disclaimer, even if it's a
Speaker 1: chiron running the whole time that the video is playing,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to make me feel that
Speaker 1: much better about the appropriation of my image, is it. So? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me back up for a second. I was using
Speaker 1: defamation and the kinds of defamation harms and harm to
Speaker 1: reputation that may be alleviated with labeling. And so the
Speaker 1: question is a good one, pressing me would disclosure in
Speaker 1: and of itself be a remedy here, And I always
Speaker 1: think of it as it's kind of like a half measure,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't remedy the invasion to let's say, for example,
Speaker 1: sexual privacy. So when you take someone that you're the
Speaker 1: example that you gave Noahs one that I would immediately
Speaker 1: use as well, which is you take someone's sexual identity
Speaker 1: and you insert their face into pornography. And what you've
Speaker 1: done is you've appropriated variability to express themselves sexually in
Speaker 1: ways that they do not want to be so seen
Speaker 1: that way, right, or depicted, And that in itself is
Speaker 1: a harm. It's a harm that resonates both with autonomy
Speaker 1: and with the consequential emotional harms. And so you're right
Speaker 1: that even with the label there, in the case of
Speaker 1: an invasion of sexual privacy, that there's harm both to
Speaker 1: reputation that may be somewhat solved by a label like hey,
Speaker 1: this isn't real, friends, I'm not passing this off as
Speaker 1: a fact. That's the harm to reputation and defamation. But
Speaker 1: there are other harms, and that includes invasions to sexual
Speaker 1: privacy that labels cannot cure. And as well, if it's
Speaker 1: in a Google search of your name, label, ain't you
Speaker 1: doing me any good? Probably because people won't see it
Speaker 1: and there isn't a meaningful way made of respond we
Speaker 1: response of this related video and audio that people are
Speaker 1: going to believe it's you. That's the second thing that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to ask you about in your fascinating
Speaker 1: comment before, and that is this idea that audio and
Speaker 1: video are somehow different because we really believe something about them.
Speaker 1: And here too, I think there are maybe two different parts.
Speaker 1: One is the idea that maybe there's something almost neurochemical
Speaker 1: about viewing audio and video that's different from other forms
Speaker 1: of representation. And I wonder if you really believe that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I believe that. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: watch you a Jason Bourne movie, I know it's not
Speaker 1: real even though it's got audio and video in it,
Speaker 1: because of the context in which I'm experiencing it. So
Speaker 1: we're perfectly capable of being skeptical about truth in the
Speaker 1: cases of audio and video. And I'm not completely convinced
Speaker 1: that if you put us under a functional MRI scan
Speaker 1: that our brains would look so radically different in the
Speaker 1: two contexts. And then the second possibility is that you
Speaker 1: were saying that we have a kind of cultural expectation
Speaker 1: that if it's on audio or if it's on a
Speaker 1: video and it looks like me, that it's me doing it.
Speaker 1: And there I want to raise the topic for us
Speaker 1: to talk about of how that's going to change. It
Speaker 1: seems almost inevitable that that expectation that we still have
Speaker 1: as of two thousand and nineteen may be gone even
Speaker 1: by two thousand and twenty. So those are two questions
Speaker 1: in one. But maybe start with the first one, is
Speaker 1: there something unique about audio and video? And then we'll
Speaker 1: go on to whether our expectations are going to change?
Speaker 1: So what is unique, and this is really important I
Speaker 1: want to underscore, is the notion of context and content
Speaker 1: when a deep seek is most effective, meaning when it
Speaker 1: convinces you that somebody's done something and said something they've
Speaker 1: never done. It's all about context and content. The Jason
Speaker 1: Bourne movie you mentioned in that context and content, I
Speaker 1: know it's a movie I go in understand that it's
Speaker 1: all this alternative universe that I'm watching on screen, But
Speaker 1: in a context and context in which the video is
Speaker 1: being passed off as and looks damn real, then people
Speaker 1: are going to take it as real. So let me
Speaker 1: just give example. Rana Ayub is a journalist in India
Speaker 1: who is an investigative reporter and she her work has
Speaker 1: attracted lots of vitriol because she challenges people in power.
Speaker 1: And there was a deep fake sex video made of her.
Speaker 1: She looked at it and she knew intellectually it wasn't her,
Speaker 1: But immediately after seeing it, she went and vomited and
Speaker 1: she couldn't sleep or eat for like weeks because seeing
Speaker 1: herself demeaned and engaging in a sex action never engaged in,
Speaker 1: it hit her, she explains in the gut she could
Speaker 1: not shake the image of it in her head. And
Speaker 1: when thousands and thousands of people saw it, because it
Speaker 1: was shared, like half of the phones in India, people
Speaker 1: apparently had it, people believed it was her and they
Speaker 1: confronted her off flne There was the suggestion, you know,
Speaker 1: people were urging others to confront her and have sex
Speaker 1: with her, to rape her. So in that context, the
Speaker 1: video was taken as true and it moved people. It
Speaker 1: moved people to write to her inbox was so full
Speaker 1: with sex solicitations from men she didn't know. She was overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: I realize, you know, we're talking about how do we
Speaker 1: distinguish between circumstances, And you ask rightfully, so you know,
Speaker 1: isn't it true now that we have our radar is
Speaker 1: up and we know when to distinguish what's false and
Speaker 1: what's real. Well, in the case of a movie, we do,
Speaker 1: our radar is up and we know we have all
Speaker 1: the and diisha that it's fake. But you know, with
Speaker 1: deep fakes that are really convincing, we won't have our
Speaker 1: radar up, And especially in certain contexts and certain content,
Speaker 1: the whole point of it is to trick us into
Speaker 1: believing it's true. It's an incredibly horrifying story about about
Speaker 1: Ranna Ayube. I want to ask though, about how we
Speaker 1: gradually change our expectations. So, you know, it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting subject in the history of photography, how people certainly
Speaker 1: believe that photographs were always real in the not only
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century but well into the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And two of the great examples that the darians and
Speaker 1: photography you like to use are the photographs of spirits,
Speaker 1: of ectoplasmic angels and fairies and sprites, which became super
Speaker 1: popular in the end of the nineteenth century. Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: who at the Sherlock Holm Stories, was interested in them,
Speaker 1: and J. M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan was interested
Speaker 1: in them. And lots of people were fascinated by these
Speaker 1: by these photographic images which appeared to give actual form
Speaker 1: to these supernatural spirits. And of course now we look
Speaker 1: at it and we say, well, that's obviously a fake photograph.
Speaker 1: The other example that they like to give is stalinist Russia,
Speaker 1: and there's a famous example of a photograph of a
Speaker 1: whole group of senior Communist Party figures and then one
Speaker 1: by one by one, as each was purged. He they
Speaker 1: were all men. He was airbrushed, or like I say,
Speaker 1: maybe didn't have airbrushed, but he was removed by earlier
Speaker 1: technological means from the photograph, until in the end you
Speaker 1: basically just had Stalin on his own. And at every moment,
Speaker 1: you know, the Communist Party kept putting out these photographs
Speaker 1: out there, and the public sort of in some way
Speaker 1: believe them, even if some people might have remembered that
Speaker 1: this photograph looked a little different than it had looked
Speaker 1: the last time. So those are both examples from the
Speaker 1: history of photography about how the technology could elicit the
Speaker 1: expectation of reality for some period of time, but then
Speaker 1: as people get familiar with the technology, our expectation changes.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering if the tragic story that you
Speaker 1: describe for runa Ayu isn't something that will last for
Speaker 1: as long as it takes for people around the world
Speaker 1: to realize what deep fakes are. And let's say it
Speaker 1: takes six months or a year or a couple of
Speaker 1: years for people to figure that out. But maybe we're
Speaker 1: on the US both a change where no one's really
Speaker 1: going to believe what they see or hear on audio
Speaker 1: or video anymore. And I think that leads us to
Speaker 1: two really troubling places, like we're at a fork in
Speaker 1: the road. And the first is if we just decide
Speaker 1: that we can't believe anything, then we're going to just
Speaker 1: believe what we want to believe, just forget the truth,
Speaker 1: you know, our confirmation biases. We believe information that accords
Speaker 1: with our world views. And so one possibility in a
Speaker 1: world in which we are so skeptical of audio and
Speaker 1: video evidence that we simply say for our hands up
Speaker 1: and say, uh, I'm just gonna believe what I want
Speaker 1: to believe. Truth be damned, right, that's one possibility, and
Speaker 1: that's that's one nightmare for the pursuit of truth. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it seems like we're already in that world. If
Speaker 1: you watch Fox and CNN at the same time we're
Speaker 1: Fox and MSNBC and you hear their alternative versions of reality,
Speaker 1: sometimes seems like everyone's already gone down that rabbit hole. Right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's one rabbit hole. That's one of my nightmares.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like Alice in the look glass like
Speaker 1: that to me is a one really bad path that
Speaker 1: you're right, we are already on. And then the second
Speaker 1: challenge for truth, and you alluded to this earlier, is
Speaker 1: that we might also be in a space where and
Speaker 1: this could be liminal. Doesn't mean it's forever, but where.
Speaker 1: And we've seen it already with politicians looking at real
Speaker 1: evidence of wrongdoing and saying, ah, you can't believe your
Speaker 1: eyes and ears, it's a fake. Think about what President
Speaker 1: Trump tried to do with the Access Hollywood tape, he
Speaker 1: sort of wises up to the idea of a deep
Speaker 1: fake after he admits to having of course been in
Speaker 1: the conversation with Billy Bush more recently. He said that
Speaker 1: wasn't me. I'm not sure that was me. He tried
Speaker 1: it out, you know. And it's Bobby Chesney and I,
Speaker 1: professor at UT Austin and my co author. We call
Speaker 1: that the liar's dividend, the possibility that liars were leverage
Speaker 1: the phenomenon of deep fakes to run away from and
Speaker 1: to escape accountability for the wrongdoing. Yeah, that liar's dividend
Speaker 1: seems almost inevitable unless there's some magic, you know, super
Speaker 1: technology that will enable us to distinguish and figure out
Speaker 1: through careful forensic analysis whether a particular audio or video
Speaker 1: clip is or is not a deep fake. So let
Speaker 1: me take a concrete, relatively recent example where I think
Speaker 1: there was and this is the not the deep fake,
Speaker 1: but the so called cheap fake of the Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: video which made her slow down her speech and distorted
Speaker 1: her speech to make her sound like she was either
Speaker 1: disoriented or maybe drunk. We want to give this president
Speaker 1: the opportunity do something historic for our country. In that case,
Speaker 1: what was the technology that enabled observers to prove that
Speaker 1: this was not actually Nancy Pelosi's voice. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it was partly finding the original video and audio
Speaker 1: where she sounded normal. We want to give this president
Speaker 1: the opportunity do something historic for our country. Yes, the
Speaker 1: key to uncovering that it was like a cheap or
Speaker 1: shallow fake was that there was existing audio of what
Speaker 1: really happened. And so once you can check the real
Speaker 1: audio and visuals next to the fabrication, it was a manipulation,
Speaker 1: really wasn't a fabrication, then you could say they played
Speaker 1: with that, they slowed down the speech. But what's challenging is,
Speaker 1: and someone worries that Bobby and I have about privacy,
Speaker 1: is that when we don't have self surveillance all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, Nancy Pelosi when she's giving public remarks, somebody's
Speaker 1: taping it. But the everyday person doesn't have perfect surveillance
Speaker 1: one hopes, right, and so you don't have carrying your
Speaker 1: phone around, you may actually de facto have perfect surveillance
Speaker 1: of yourself, whether you know it or not, or if
Speaker 1: you're speaking while Alexa is on. I mean, we usually
Speaker 1: think that's a problem that you're constantly being surveilled wherever
Speaker 1: you go, but in your account, it might actually be
Speaker 1: a good thing. I mean, it very easy to build
Speaker 1: in a future to your phone. I mean it's already
Speaker 1: in there that listens to everything you say, and then
Speaker 1: you could always pull it out and say, well, as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I didn't say that, and we might.
Speaker 1: I mean, so what Bobby and I imagine in our
Speaker 1: work together is the possibility that we take that. You know,
Speaker 1: our phones right now are they're basically GPS trackers, and
Speaker 1: they track everything we do and say with those phones
Speaker 1: through text and through our sending photos. But they're not
Speaker 1: on in the sense of they're not my microphone recording
Speaker 1: devices unless somebody installed cyberstocking at an app on our phone.
Speaker 1: Right so we're not although that's not true if you
Speaker 1: have if you have Hey Siri on there, Oh please,
Speaker 1: didn't you turn that off on your phone? Sorry? Well,
Speaker 1: I was going to until our conversation because I guess
Speaker 1: you know, I thought to myself, I wouldn't want everything
Speaker 1: that I say to be recorded. But now I think
Speaker 1: to myself, if someone's going to make a fake video
Speaker 1: of me saying or doing something, maybe it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so terrible for me to have a twenty four seven
Speaker 1: record of everything I've said and done right and what
Speaker 1: Bobby and I are worried about our market mechanisms. That,
Speaker 1: let's say, for people who have a very public persona
Speaker 1: having a lifeging record of everything you do and say
Speaker 1: and every interaction, sort of like the novel The Circle,
Speaker 1: you know, by Dave Eggers, that possibility may not be
Speaker 1: so much a choice for people who their actions have
Speaker 1: high potential for harm. For very powerful entities like a company,
Speaker 1: So it maybe someday, you know, you have a company
Speaker 1: CEO who part of the deal getting a very high
Speaker 1: salary is you have to be under surveillance twenty four
Speaker 1: seven so that you can debunk the deep fake that
Speaker 1: if time just right, could throw off the IPO. And
Speaker 1: my worry is that in the broader term, we may
Speaker 1: have an unraveling of privacy. It's a concept that Scott
Speaker 1: Peppett like wisely wrote about like eight years ago, the
Speaker 1: notion that we'll see market pressures that would require us
Speaker 1: to give up our privacy. Fourth cheaper insurance right for
Speaker 1: our cars or health. We may see that same move.
Speaker 1: It's small now, you know, wearing a fit for your
Speaker 1: insurance company may then become something more pervasive and self surveillance.
Speaker 1: And it is true it would be able to debunk
Speaker 1: the deep fake. That's time just right in an attempt
Speaker 1: to hurt the CEO and attempt to hurt the company.
Speaker 1: But it's got longer term consequences that I want us
Speaker 1: all to think about before we rush to embrace what
Speaker 1: I think is coming market solutions. Because you know, folks
Speaker 1: get in touch with both Bobby and I. Companies are
Speaker 1: now seeking our advice on what we should tell CEOs
Speaker 1: about what they should do to protect themselves and what
Speaker 1: are you telling them? What we often say is there
Speaker 1: a range of possibilities, and one of them, of course,
Speaker 1: are kind of life logging services, and I want them
Speaker 1: to think about the broader implications of doing that, because
Speaker 1: I think it's a bad idea. Do the technologists think
Speaker 1: that in principle it will not be possible to detect
Speaker 1: a true fabrication? Because after all, what is digital audience video?
Speaker 1: A bunch of zeros and ones, and it's possible to
Speaker 1: make these things, maybe it's possible to mask the fact
Speaker 1: that they've been made. Or do the technologists believe that,
Speaker 1: as with much technology, there will always be someone one
Speaker 1: step ahead. So someone makes a really good deep fake,
Speaker 1: someone else develops a technology to detect that deep fake,
Speaker 1: because that would seem to be a possible solution that
Speaker 1: would get you around the life logging alternative where you
Speaker 1: always have to be prepared to say that never happened.
Speaker 1: That is to say, if there were some magic bullet technology,
Speaker 1: it would have to change over time, like in an
Speaker 1: arms race, they could actually detect that. Does that seem
Speaker 1: I mean, what are the technologists say when you ask
Speaker 1: them about that? Do they think it's pointless? Do they
Speaker 1: think it's possible? Right now? I wish I could say
Speaker 1: I had a firm answer, And normally I am pretty
Speaker 1: bullish about the potential role for technology to at least
Speaker 1: intervene in some of these problems. But my sense of
Speaker 1: the broader view of technologists is that they're skeptical, you know,
Speaker 1: about the possibility of a perfect tool of detection. And
Speaker 1: we certainly need, as human beings, better radar for fakery.
Speaker 1: We just believe what we want to believe, and we
Speaker 1: click and we share, and we don't think, and we
Speaker 1: need to become better digital citizens in that way and
Speaker 1: think before we share, think before we like not be
Speaker 1: such immediate consumers of information and shares. And we need
Speaker 1: to do a whole lot of education with the media too,
Speaker 1: because the media is a source of amplification. You know,
Speaker 1: I know that the Wall Street journal has begun educating
Speaker 1: journalists about the phenomenon of deep fakes and what they're
Speaker 1: going to do about it, and I imagine that you know,
Speaker 1: the most reputable outlets are going to be doing the
Speaker 1: same because there isn't a technical easy way to figure out.
Speaker 1: At least now there is, but soon enough there won't be.
Speaker 1: And so how we're going to figure out the truth
Speaker 1: is God blessed journalists because most people won't have, you know,
Speaker 1: constant surveillance on themselves, even if they have their GPS
Speaker 1: track or their phone right, it won't we have recorded
Speaker 1: the interaction between people unless they've done it consensually. And
Speaker 1: so it's journalists takes hard work right to interview people.
Speaker 1: But it's not like there's no so many people just
Speaker 1: be sayd Danielle, you're a nihilist. You're saying deep fakes
Speaker 1: is just a crisis we can't tackle, and that's not true.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of the same old problems, but exponentially,
Speaker 1: you know, spread well. Thank you very much, Danielle. I'm
Speaker 1: super grateful to you, and I certified that this is
Speaker 1: a real conversation that we actually had and was not
Speaker 1: created by deep fakes, cheap fakes, or anything in between.
Speaker 1: Right yep, I certify this is a real audio. Thank you, Danielle.
Speaker 1: That was really fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you
Speaker 1: Noh for having me on. From talking to Danielle Citron,
Speaker 1: I'm convinced they were really only at the beginning of
Speaker 1: finding our collective solution to the challenges post by deep fakes.
Speaker 1: Think of the example of photography, where we once believe
Speaker 1: that whatever we saw was true, and we gradually came
Speaker 1: to see things in a more complex way. Should our
Speaker 1: response be to pass laws that regulate what kinds of
Speaker 1: images can be created, fake or real? Or should the
Speaker 1: answer be to rely on self regulation or technological solutions.
Speaker 1: These are challenges that would look very, very different if
Speaker 1: we were in the midst of the technology, the invention
Speaker 1: of the photograph. Then they look today at the distance
Speaker 1: of one hundred and fifty or one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: five years, So We're going to have to drill down
Speaker 1: on just how much deep fakes do fool people, and
Speaker 1: that's something that we're going to have to watch very
Speaker 1: closely going forward. The first couple of very popular deep
Speaker 1: fakes are going to lead to great confusion. But over
Speaker 1: time we may observe that the public becomes acclimated to
Speaker 1: the potential uses of deep fakes and becomes more skeptical.
Speaker 1: As our skepticism rises, the need for regulation may well
Speaker 1: go down. Danielle remains extremely concerned about the sexual privacy
Speaker 1: of individuals that can be violated by deep fakes. That's
Speaker 1: an independent and serious concern, and it will require careful
Speaker 1: regulatory attention to balance human being's interests in privacy and
Speaker 1: dignity against the countervailing concerns a freedom of expression. Now
Speaker 1: our sound of the week that was the Attorney General
Speaker 1: of Israel announcing the indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Bbing
Speaker 1: Netanyahu on a range of corruption charges. Benjamin Etanyahu is
Speaker 1: not just another Israeli politician. He has served longer in
Speaker 1: the office of Prime Minister than any other person in
Speaker 1: Israel's history, including the Ledge and Dary first Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of Israel. David Ben Gurion. He's become a kind of
Speaker 1: permanent fixture in the minds of many people on the
Speaker 1: Israeli political scene. He's so hard to displace that, even
Speaker 1: though not only one but two recent elections led to
Speaker 1: his failing to get a meaningful majority, he's still the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister because although he couldn't form a government, neither
Speaker 1: could his main opponents. The idea that a sitting prime
Speaker 1: minister in a democracy, admittedly a struggling democracy in Israel's case,
Speaker 1: but a democracy nevertheless, will actually be put on trial
Speaker 1: for crimes in real time is a kind of extraordinary
Speaker 1: reality for Israeli politics, which are always full of surprises.
Speaker 1: Is this a good or a bad thing for the
Speaker 1: state of Israeli democracy? This could really go in one
Speaker 1: of two different ways. There is a pessimistic view of it,
Speaker 1: and it's hard not to sympathize with that pessimistic view.
Speaker 1: It says that Israel has some tendencies that are pushing
Speaker 1: it in the direction of other democracies, not excluding the
Speaker 1: United States under Donald Trump, but also including places like
Speaker 1: Poland and Hungry, where increasingly dominant single leaders serve an
Speaker 1: office for a long time and call on impulses of
Speaker 1: nationalism and populism to retain power. In this context, the
Speaker 1: suggestion that N'tanyahu may actually also be guilty of crimes
Speaker 1: of corruption would tend to suggest that Israeli democracy is
Speaker 1: not going in a good direction. After all, what could
Speaker 1: be more embarrassing for a democracy than evidence that a
Speaker 1: sitting prime minister is guilty of charges like these. Yet
Speaker 1: there is an alternative picture, and it's this, instead of
Speaker 1: being tied in knots as a consequence of the charges
Speaker 1: that are present, has acted corruptly, sound, familiar, or anyone
Speaker 1: Israel actually seems to be taking on the question directly.
Speaker 1: An independent attorney general actually chose to charge the prime
Speaker 1: minister with a crime. This is after N'taniah, who had
Speaker 1: announced his hopes that the kannesse At Israel's legislature would
Speaker 1: actually pass a law rendering him immune from criminal prosecution
Speaker 1: in the middle of his term, a law that so
Speaker 1: far has not been enacted in some way that could
Speaker 1: be seen as a big win for a democracy, After all,
Speaker 1: the democracy must be pretty strong on the dimension of
Speaker 1: fighting public corruption. If the attorney general can actually bring
Speaker 1: charges against a sitting prime minister, and if that prime
Speaker 1: minister is one of the most powerful in the history
Speaker 1: of the country. That's what you would ideally want to
Speaker 1: see in a democracy. The principle that nobody is above
Speaker 1: the law can't happen in the United States, where a
Speaker 1: sitting president, as a practical matter, can't be charged with
Speaker 1: a crime because the Attorney General in the United States
Speaker 1: works for the president and is pretty unlikely to charge
Speaker 1: his boss. The outcome of whether this entire episode will
Speaker 1: turn out to be good or bad for Israeli democracy
Speaker 1: is one that we will learn in the coming months.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's possible that Nittagnaho could be charged, tried,
Speaker 1: and acquitted. It's also possible that, through some complex combination
Speaker 1: of results, he might actually avoid going to trial. Yet
Speaker 1: it's also simultaneously possible that he will be subject to
Speaker 1: judicial process like any other citizen, and the consequences of
Speaker 1: that development for Israeli democracy could be very far reaching.
Speaker 1: This is a story that we'll keep on watching going forward.
Speaker 1: It's one that can only continue to be fascinating. Deep
Speaker 1: Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer
Speaker 1: is Lydia Gene Coott, with engineering by Jason Gambrel and
Speaker 1: Jason Roskowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music
Speaker 1: is composed by Luis Gera special thanks to the Pushkin Brass,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman.
Speaker 1: This is deep background