Speaker 1: Friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist, welcome back to stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. We have a classic
Speaker 1: episode for you today that has only aged better with time.
Speaker 1: You may recall back in twenty nineteen, we started talking
Speaker 1: about the idea of a deep fake. What is a
Speaker 1: deep fake?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a generated version of something that looks real.
Speaker 2: And it's strange how even since twenty nineteen, the way
Speaker 2: we talk about this concept and even the vocabulary that
Speaker 2: we use surrounding it has a it's changed completely. It's
Speaker 2: been altered by artificial intelligence and the way we talk
Speaker 2: about that thing. But it's a Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 2: fake thing, right, It's a it looks like Matt, but
Speaker 2: it's not Matt.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Photographs have been faked since the invention of photography,
Speaker 1: which we talked about there pretty often. And I just again,
Speaker 1: you know, we get a lot of messages and people
Speaker 1: ask me, hey, Ben, are you guys ever gonna successfully
Speaker 1: predict a good or a positive thing? We hope so.
Speaker 1: But we were right about a lot of evil things,
Speaker 1: and deep fakes are one of them. It was really
Speaker 1: interesting to listen back to this episode together and to
Speaker 1: realize just despite your point about nomenclature to realize just
Speaker 1: how disturbingly accurate a lot of this was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's get into it. We assure you these
Speaker 2: are the real US is having this conversation.
Speaker 3: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 3: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 3: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 3: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name's Matt, my name
Speaker 2: is no.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We were joined as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Michigan, trol Deck and most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. As we are
Speaker 1: barreling toward the end of the year, if that is
Speaker 1: you believe in the current calendar?
Speaker 2: Yes, right, I mean.
Speaker 1: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Speaker 4: We're gonna do three part harmony.
Speaker 1: No, no, okay, here, let's start this way. What's the
Speaker 1: what's the very last thing you watched on video before
Speaker 1: we recorded today, like VHS, No, just video, just any
Speaker 1: video on any screen.
Speaker 2: I can't really remember, but right now I'm feeling lost
Speaker 2: in the woods all right.
Speaker 4: Is that another queen reference?
Speaker 2: That's a reference for all the parents out there who've watched.
Speaker 4: First Into Is that the song that actually held up?
Speaker 2: I liked.
Speaker 4: People were saying that the music was a little lackluster.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. When when I get older, everything is going
Speaker 2: to make sense. That is performed by Josh Gadd is
Speaker 2: one of the best songs written.
Speaker 1: Who's Who's Josh Gadd?
Speaker 2: He plays the Little Snowman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so so you saw that, which is entirely
Speaker 1: a deep fake.
Speaker 4: Basically it's CGI. You know, it's like e'sing real going
Speaker 4: on there. I watched The Irishman, which is an interesting
Speaker 4: thing to bring up when when we're talking about today's
Speaker 4: topic because it uses anti aging de aging technology, which
Speaker 4: sort of a hybrid of like video and CGI to
Speaker 4: make the actors look younger in the earlier parts of
Speaker 4: the film where they're you know, their younger selves. The
Speaker 4: movie takes place over decades, and it still has a
Speaker 4: little bit of that Uncanny Valley kind of vibe. It
Speaker 4: looks a little just too perfect, almost like a cut
Speaker 4: scene from a final fantasy game or something like that.
Speaker 4: But you eventually stopped noticing it. So that was the
Speaker 4: last I've been watching that I had to watch in
Speaker 4: two sittings. It's quite long, and I, of course Sasey
Speaker 4: would not approve.
Speaker 1: I watched The Irishman on the recommendation of our own
Speaker 1: Paul Michion control decan who has fantastic, impeccable taste in
Speaker 1: film and also has a film of his own out
Speaker 1: of It now on Amazon Prime. You okay with me
Speaker 1: pluging that, Paul.
Speaker 2: It's called Annie, Get Your Gun. There are some people
Speaker 2: here at the apartment complex and they mean business.
Speaker 1: It does take place in the city, Annie in the City.
Speaker 1: Do check it out. You'll astute listeners will notice some
Speaker 1: cameos from some of our podcast.
Speaker 2: Cohort, especially Ben Well.
Speaker 1: I think my favorite turn is probably one of our
Speaker 1: super producers, Chandler Mays. He's really the scene stealer for me.
Speaker 1: So check it out, tell us what you think, and
Speaker 1: we can assure you, to the best of our ability
Speaker 1: that the people who appear to be on screen saying
Speaker 1: and doing things are actually on screen saying and doing things.
Speaker 1: This is not a revolutionary thought. For centuries, people used
Speaker 1: to say scene is believing, and this meant that while
Speaker 1: people can make up anything in conversation or writing. Actually
Speaker 1: witnessing something with your own eyes presented inarguable proof of
Speaker 1: an event. This began to change with the rise of photography.
Speaker 1: Photographs could be faked. During the heyday of spiritualism in
Speaker 1: the West, it was very common for mediums or people
Speaker 1: purporting to be mediums to fake photographs.
Speaker 2: The old double exposure right right.
Speaker 1: Which was an unfamiliar alien technology to the casual observer.
Speaker 1: We cannot blame people for believing that they saw it
Speaker 1: with their own eyes. They were unaware of the trickery
Speaker 1: that could or could not be involved. And then things
Speaker 1: escalate further with the dawn of moving pictures. That's when directors, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and other industry professionals begin working assiduously to make the
Speaker 1: unreal seem real for fantasy's sake. For fantasy's sake, yes exactly, Matt,
Speaker 1: to bring the fantasies of the human mind to life
Speaker 1: of a sort on screen. Our species also quickly realized
Speaker 1: the power inherent and film, and at times history has
Speaker 1: hinged on specific images or even just bits of video.
Speaker 1: So today's question, what happens in a world where seeing
Speaker 1: is no longer believing? What happens when the line between
Speaker 1: film fiction and film fact blur. Let's start with some
Speaker 1: of the most immediately important video the world, the news.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts.
Speaker 4: So, according to a twenty eighteen survey from the Pew
Speaker 4: Research Center, forty seven percent of Americans prefer watching the
Speaker 4: news rather than reading or listening to it. Thirty four percent,
Speaker 4: on the other hand, prefer to read the news and
Speaker 4: nineteen percent to listen to it.
Speaker 2: And I know those people who prefer their news on video,
Speaker 2: most of them still really want to watch it on
Speaker 2: a big screen, on a maybe not a huge screen,
Speaker 2: but a bigger screen like a television, rather than internet video,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe on your phone or on your computer.
Speaker 2: And that may be surprising to a lot of people listening.
Speaker 2: I know it's a little surprising to me, right. I
Speaker 2: think it's because, look, this is my understanding of it.
Speaker 2: But I think I think a lot of the people
Speaker 2: who end up responding to a Pew survey maybe are
Speaker 2: leaning more towards people who would be watching their televisions,
Speaker 2: or maybe a little skewing a little older maybe.
Speaker 1: Or the kind of people who say, sure, take a survey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, That's just my read of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good point.
Speaker 2: And then Pugh found just over four and ten, So
Speaker 2: four out of ten United States adults prefer TV, compared
Speaker 2: with about a third who prefer the web, and then
Speaker 2: fourteen percent who prefer radio and seven only seven percent
Speaker 2: who actually want to read the words.
Speaker 1: Of the news right for one reason or another. That's
Speaker 1: the other thing. We don't have a solid methodological grasp
Speaker 1: of how these questions were accurate, like how they were built,
Speaker 1: how they were framed, and there's so much that goes
Speaker 1: into there. But these numbers feel pretty solid, if surprising.
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that the four of
Speaker 1: us recording obviously longtime listeners. You know this. We don't
Speaker 1: just go home and turn on CNN, Fox or MSNBC
Speaker 1: or something. We we get to the edges of stuff.
Speaker 1: We look into the weird things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, generally, I just really quickly and maybe we do
Speaker 2: a quick pull here. Generally, if I'm if I'm consuming
Speaker 2: the news, it is through a written article.
Speaker 4: What about you, guys, Yeah, I typically read stuff because
Speaker 4: of the way we research for the show and other shows.
Speaker 4: It tends to be a kind of our bread and butter.
Speaker 4: Occasionally watch documentary, read parts of books. We don't always
Speaker 4: have the luxury of reading, you know, an entire book
Speaker 4: for one podcast episode, but definitely excerpts and chapters. And
Speaker 4: then occasionally, you know, stuff like YouTube videos, which tend
Speaker 4: to sort of show you where the kind of Internet
Speaker 4: culture or the zeitgeist is, you know, coming down on
Speaker 4: one side or the other of an issue.
Speaker 1: I think I would watch television more often if there
Speaker 1: were more if there was a larger degree of variants
Speaker 1: in the narratives and stories presented in the West at least,
Speaker 1: so people like me naturally end up watching things on
Speaker 1: the Internet because that's the easiest way to get opposing viewpoints. Right,
Speaker 1: you want to see Tinhua or Al Jazeera or RT,
Speaker 1: all of which are imperfect, then you you probably are
Speaker 1: not going to see that in your basic Comcast package, right,
Speaker 1: So the majority of Americans don't prefer online video just yet,
Speaker 1: even though you know, I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: listening because we listen to podcasts, are already all up
Speaker 1: on the internet for video content for news, right and.
Speaker 2: For honestly audio podcasts about the news, like The Daily
Speaker 2: or just Get Daily Zeitgeist. There's all kinds of shows
Speaker 2: out there that will give you what you need in
Speaker 2: an audio way.
Speaker 1: The economists BBC, Global News, et cetera. And this this
Speaker 1: makes sense for us. But even if the majority of
Speaker 1: Americans or the largest swath of Americans don't prefer online
Speaker 1: video just yet, at least for the news, there's no
Speaker 1: arguing that the Internet has made a massive impact on
Speaker 1: video technology and filming in jet general. And we are
Speaker 1: in the midst of this evolution as we speak. It
Speaker 1: is an evolution at a very fast cadence. The earlier,
Speaker 1: the earliest, and the earlier film technology. And you guys
Speaker 1: and Paul know this very very well. Like the earliest
Speaker 1: stuff was super expensive, highly specialized, it was cantankerous, and
Speaker 1: it broke a lot. Add to that, distribution channels for
Speaker 1: anything filmed were owned by a fairly small number of
Speaker 1: corporate or state interests, and this meant that whether your
Speaker 1: film was a sci fi blockbuster or whether it was
Speaker 1: just some shameless World War II propaganda, it would go
Speaker 1: through predictable channels. The same people would shake the same
Speaker 1: hands to get that to a theater or a screen
Speaker 1: near you. But the technology continued to evolve. Soon people
Speaker 1: were able to purchase televisions and instead of relying on radios,
Speaker 1: they would be able to put an image with a sound.
Speaker 1: This played huge role like the first televised presidential debate.
Speaker 1: You know about this one, right, Nixon and Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, just the difference in their appearances, and how
Speaker 2: much of a difference that made outside of the words
Speaker 2: they were saying.
Speaker 1: Exactly. So, people listening to the radio, regardless of political party,
Speaker 1: thought that Nixon won the debate, and people watching television,
Speaker 1: regardless of the political party, thought that Kennedy won the debate.
Speaker 1: So we were able to bring a small version of
Speaker 1: the big screen to living rooms around the world, and
Speaker 1: happily ever after, right, yes, yeah, well, so then we
Speaker 1: had the rise of home projectors vhs, like you had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier in old DVD and so on. These allowed
Speaker 1: viewers more agency. You didn't just have to stick to
Speaker 1: the programming dictated by your TV channels. Your CBS is
Speaker 1: your NBCs. Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's like a rudimentary early version of what we now
Speaker 4: think of as on demand consuming of media, which has
Speaker 4: really changed the game entirely.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And we're still segments of the industry are
Speaker 1: still attempting to keep up with that change. As film
Speaker 1: technology improved cost for equipment began to creator. Nowadays, filmmakers
Speaker 1: don't always have to go to a studio. You don't
Speaker 1: have to shake the same hands at Warner or whatever, and.
Speaker 2: You could shoot a low budget movie with technology available
Speaker 2: and you know, make VHS copies let's say, of it,
Speaker 2: and distribute it locally or maybe two stores in a
Speaker 2: local area. I'm just saying, like, in that time, even
Speaker 2: before you know nowadays, it was possible to escape the studio.
Speaker 1: Right right, And this escape from the studio, as exodus
Speaker 1: from the studio, has accelerated the rise of home and
Speaker 1: internet video commingled and it led us to the current world,
Speaker 1: a world in which anyone with a little bit of
Speaker 1: scratch can purchase tools to make their own video. Right.
Speaker 4: And not only is it the democratization of creating, it's
Speaker 4: the democratization of consuming, because you know, anyone can upload
Speaker 4: a video to the internet for free on YouTube and
Speaker 4: you can command your own audience depending on the quality
Speaker 4: of your workhound quality is sort of a loose term there,
Speaker 4: I guess, but at least in terms of how salacious
Speaker 4: or how kind of hooky it is and how much
Speaker 4: it grabs people's attention you can actually command an audience
Speaker 4: of scale as a creator with very little overhead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with worldwide virtually instant distribution sick.
Speaker 1: Yes, So if these filmmakers have an Internet connection, they
Speaker 1: can bypass those antiquated channels of distribution send their work
Speaker 1: across the planet. Anyone else with web access can, in theory,
Speaker 1: watch it to their hearts content as much or as
Speaker 1: little as they wish. But don't feel bad for the
Speaker 1: old guard. The democratization of av technology did not lead
Speaker 1: them to extinction. They evolved as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah they had to. I mean, a journalist in say
Speaker 4: Hong Kong now during the protests that we're experiencing, can
Speaker 4: immediately post video and help out those news providers, shedding
Speaker 4: light on events that might have been otherwise relegated to
Speaker 4: the shadows. Reporters in Belgium or Bolivia can record political
Speaker 4: announcements that the capitol live and stream it to millions
Speaker 4: of viewers or followers.
Speaker 2: The president can, you know, before having important meetings with
Speaker 2: world leaders decide to talk for forty five minutes because
Speaker 2: the cameras are live.
Speaker 1: Mm and other world leaders can be caught doing their
Speaker 1: own rendition of mean girls who are significant geopolitical events.
Speaker 1: All in all, this is impressive stuff. Right live video
Speaker 1: has the potential to bring our incredibly litigious and bellicose
Speaker 1: species a little bit closer together. If everyone can see
Speaker 1: something happening plain as day at the same time while
Speaker 1: it's happening, what on earth is there left to argue about?
Speaker 1: Scene is believing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: No? What?
Speaker 2: But we'll talk about out right after word from our splatzer.
Speaker 4: Wow.
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Hey, Remember when we said that technology, that stuff that
Speaker 2: lets us do all the things that we like to do.
Speaker 2: It's still evolving. Remember we talked about that. Uh, well,
Speaker 2: we're on the precipice of this other thing, this this
Speaker 2: new shift in video technology, and it is not I
Speaker 2: don't see good things happening from it. It's gonna be
Speaker 2: like amazing for those dank memes, but for everything else.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Yeah, it's an inherently conspiratorial shift. Today we
Speaker 1: are talking about the rise of the deep fake, which
Speaker 1: sounds hyperbolic but very much is not. What is a
Speaker 1: deep fake? Somebody might be saying, well, we're glad you asked.
Speaker 1: Our story starts with a fellow named Ian J. Goodfellow.
Speaker 1: I think that's really good. But while you may not
Speaker 1: have heard of his name before, while you may be
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with the concept of deep fakes, you have almost
Speaker 1: certainly already encountered some version of Ian Goodfellow's work. He
Speaker 1: works extensively in areas of what we call machine learning.
Speaker 1: Anybody who remembers our earlier conversation about machine consciousness with
Speaker 1: a friend of the show, Damian Patrick Williams is probably
Speaker 1: familiar with these edges of science, the bleeding edge of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. Here's what Ian did. Essentially, he taught algorithms
Speaker 1: to play games with each other, specifically to kind of
Speaker 1: play game theory, which is still incredibly strange and important.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, let's talk about what deep learning is really,
Speaker 2: because we're talking about machine learning just essentially teaching versions
Speaker 2: of artificial intelligence how to learn. And in this case,
Speaker 2: this is a sub field of machine learning we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about called deep learning. And it's fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: It is the it's also the stuff of nightmares. It's
Speaker 2: the stuff of our eventual future, and there's no way
Speaker 2: around it. But it's the concept of focusing algorithms that
Speaker 2: are focusing on algorithms that are inspired by the way
Speaker 2: the human brain functions. And they are called artificial neural networks.
Speaker 2: And if you're watching the final season of Silicon Valley,
Speaker 2: you're getting kind of a crash course in that right
Speaker 2: now as the well, as we're recording this, the penultimate
Speaker 2: episode just came out. But anyway, it's it's really fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: And Goodfellow, our friend Ian J. Goodfellow actually wrote a
Speaker 2: book on this subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a book called his book about deep learning is
Speaker 1: called deep learning.
Speaker 2: Hey come, yeah, I know it's a coining.
Speaker 1: And he's a busy guy. So he explains deep learning
Speaker 1: this way. He thinks of it in terms of a
Speaker 1: hierarchy of concepts, and he says having a hierarchy of
Speaker 1: concepts allows a computer to learn these complicated concepts by
Speaker 1: building them out of simpler ones, which is what we
Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time doing it. How stuff works?
Speaker 2: Right, have this episode even we do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how, because that's how our brains often approach things.
Speaker 1: We build toward that gestalt. So he says, if we
Speaker 1: draw a graph showing how these concepts are built upon
Speaker 1: each other, we see that the graph is just visually,
Speaker 1: it's deep. It has a ton of layers. And he says,
Speaker 1: for this reason, we call this approach to artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: deep learning. In plain English. What that means is that
Speaker 1: we as a species have programs that can work more
Speaker 1: and more like an organic brain, and artificial neural network
Speaker 1: is meant to function more and more like a brain.
Speaker 1: And he has one very well known invention. This is
Speaker 1: the engine behind his work that you have already seen.
Speaker 1: Even if you've never heard of a deep fake, you've
Speaker 1: never heard of being goodfellow, and you've never heard of
Speaker 1: machine or deep learning.
Speaker 4: That's right, and it's his most well known invention innovation.
Speaker 4: It's something that's called generative adversarial network or a general
Speaker 4: adversarial network or GAN and gans enable algorithms to move
Speaker 4: beyond classifying data into actually generating or creating images.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Now maybe you're the gears are turning in
Speaker 2: your mind. Maybe I have seen something like is it.
Speaker 4: Like the deep dream kind of stuff really Google's deep Dream, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: where it would uh sort of take a like a
Speaker 4: face or an image and then it would pull things
Speaker 4: from elsewhere on the Internet that it's sort of matched
Speaker 4: up to those textures or you know, spaces like to
Speaker 4: fill with other images of say like dogs or slugs
Speaker 4: or what have you. And then people started animating them
Speaker 4: and they became these like hellscape kind of psychedelic nightmare images. Yeah,
Speaker 4: very dalias, very eschery, just like super trippy really for
Speaker 4: lack of a better term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're you're on the right track there, because they
Speaker 1: are indeed related. In terms of the science, deep dream
Speaker 1: is a makes use of rather something called a convolutional
Speaker 1: neural network or a com net or CNN, which could
Speaker 1: be a little confusing. So they're very similar approaches.
Speaker 2: At basis.
Speaker 1: So these generational adversarial networks are trying to trick each other.
Speaker 1: They can move beyond classifying data into generating or creating data,
Speaker 1: generating or creating images. So these two networks, these two
Speaker 1: generative adversarial networks they attempt to fool each other into
Speaker 1: thinking that a given image is real and using as
Speaker 1: little as one image. From that back and forth between
Speaker 1: what's called the generative and the discriminative sides of this thing.
Speaker 1: Just using one image, they can create a video clip
Speaker 1: of a person, so they can animate a picture, and
Speaker 1: they also you can also take it a step further
Speaker 1: and have that animation speaking and what sounds like that
Speaker 1: person or that image's voice. Samsung's AI Center released a
Speaker 1: report on the science behind DAN and they said such
Speaker 1: an approach is able to learn highly realistic and personalized
Speaker 1: talking head models of new people and even portrait paintings.
Speaker 2: It's just people, new people.
Speaker 1: Created people, generated humans, and they look great.
Speaker 2: They really do.
Speaker 1: I'll say it, some of them are attractive. If you
Speaker 1: didn't know, and you just saw a picture of one
Speaker 1: of these generated images on your dating app of choice, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a couple you would probably swipe right on.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't know which way to swipe because I don't
Speaker 2: understand those things, but I totally get what you're saying.
Speaker 1: So and it's startling because now even now you can
Speaker 1: take tests where you attempt to identify a real person
Speaker 1: from a generated talking head or image, and it's tough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're getting closer and closer to traversing the Uncanny Valley.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, and it's it really is frustrating that
Speaker 2: it's not easy year because for so long there and
Speaker 2: I think you, Noel, you've referenced Final Fantasy cut scenes
Speaker 2: or something earlier on. And I remember when that Final
Speaker 2: Fantasy movie came out a long time ago. There was
Speaker 2: almost all too good at that point. Well it was, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was all computer generated and it looked fantastic. It
Speaker 2: was a feature film. I remember thinking how incredible it
Speaker 2: was seeing that, and then seeing something like Avatar, where
Speaker 2: you've got these I forget what they're called, the nav
Speaker 2: the nave that don't look human necessarily, but they look
Speaker 2: real enough, right, And then when you get to something
Speaker 2: like this and you're looking at these just the portraits,
Speaker 2: even it feels it feels pretty scary, not being able
Speaker 2: to trust your eyes to know if something is real
Speaker 2: or not, even though it's generated. Either way, if it
Speaker 2: was an actual image of a person and it was
Speaker 2: taken converted into data you know, ones and zeros, then
Speaker 2: displayed on your screen, that's not a real person necessarily
Speaker 2: you're looking at the representation, but just knowing that a
Speaker 2: computer can fool you that hard is pretty.
Speaker 1: Cruel and very easily.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's kind of why I wonder too, why you know,
Speaker 4: to be fair, a lot of the de aging stuff
Speaker 4: in movies is quite good, so much better than it's
Speaker 4: ever been. But there were a couple spots in The
Speaker 4: Irishman where I was like, really, like, I thought the
Speaker 4: technology was better than this, and it is, But I
Speaker 4: guess it's different when you're making a younger version that
Speaker 4: has to then coincide with written lines and map up
Speaker 4: to you know, an actor's face and you know, look
Speaker 4: believable in terms of the way the mouth moves and
Speaker 4: acting ticks and all of that stuff that's specific to
Speaker 4: a scene rather than a pre existing video of some kind, right.
Speaker 1: And it also goes down to how much existing footage
Speaker 1: they may be able to obtain of when the person
Speaker 1: was that age. So that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: it probably works best with celebrities and political figures because
Speaker 1: there's just you know, not everybody did taxi driver or
Speaker 1: a kid, right. So the stuff with DeNiro specifically, I
Speaker 1: would argue he just always looked vaguely in his late
Speaker 1: thirties to early forties and somewhat perturbed, like, right, was
Speaker 1: it a short or is he mad about a relationship?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? His face has a story.
Speaker 2: It tells I want to bring something up here quickly.
Speaker 2: With the the high priced effects that were going on
Speaker 2: in a movie like The Irishman, with these aging effects
Speaker 2: this these are designed to be displayed in the highest
Speaker 2: resolution possible. So you're talking four K, ten ADP something
Speaker 2: like that. It's designed to do that, right, it's on
Speaker 2: a streaming service. They don't know what you're going to
Speaker 2: play it on what screen, but it's got to be
Speaker 2: high res, right, And what we're saying is it's fairly
Speaker 2: easy to discern that something is going on here at
Speaker 2: that high resolution. But what if it's a much lower resolution,
Speaker 2: more grainy, like more are destroyed like a gift, like
Speaker 2: a small YouTube video that isn't maybe ten ADP or something,
Speaker 2: or a cell phone camera video that then gets uploaded integrated.
Speaker 2: It changes our ability to discern some of these things.
Speaker 4: And we'll get to this, but again, all of this
Speaker 4: comes down to these algorithms, which, as it turns out,
Speaker 4: require an insane amount of computing power. Yes, yeah, even
Speaker 4: to do in these low res forms right for now,
Speaker 4: at least exactly right. So think of it this way
Speaker 4: now without too much of a hassle. As you are
Speaker 4: listening to today's episode, you can get this technology online.
Speaker 4: You can create videos that are nearly impossible to identify
Speaker 4: as quote unquote fake. For a fun example, we just
Speaker 4: want to keep it innocuous before we have to strap
Speaker 4: in and go down this rabbit hole. For fun example,
Speaker 4: Let's do two fun examples. Let's say you have a
Speaker 4: friend who knows you love Marvel movies, and so for
Speaker 4: you know, your birthday, your King Seniera or whatever, they
Speaker 4: make a deep fake video where it looks like you're
Speaker 4: in a Marvel film. The Avengers all assemble, and holy smokes,
Speaker 4: there's Derek.
Speaker 2: That's fun, all right.
Speaker 1: That seems fun. What a thoughtful kind gift. Or to
Speaker 1: make it a little more applicable to our show. One
Speaker 1: thing that would be a fantastic deep fake present for
Speaker 1: our very own super producer, Paul Michigan Control Deck, and
Speaker 1: would be to take an Applebee's commercial and just put
Speaker 1: him in it. Oh man, And so he's the person there,
Speaker 1: you know, gesturing in amazement as the ribs and the
Speaker 1: bottomless Jalapaniel poppers or whatever come out, and we even
Speaker 1: have him say the tagline in his voice. That is
Speaker 1: so much fun. But that is not the only use
Speaker 1: of this technology. Make no mistake, the lid of Pandora's jar,
Speaker 1: and it was a jar, is unscrewed. This technology is
Speaker 1: no longer theoretical. It is very real, and it is
Speaker 1: immensely dangerous. Why we'll tell you after a word from our.
Speaker 2: Sponsor, psych We're not gonna tell you.
Speaker 1: It's not even us.
Speaker 2: Oh what you thought this was conspiracy stuff. We're just
Speaker 2: your car talking to you.
Speaker 1: Is my real voice, and Robert de Niro so terrible
Speaker 1: denu impressions. Aside, there are applications of deep fakes which
Speaker 1: should trouble every single person or bought listening to this show.
Speaker 1: I did not initially think of the first application, which
Speaker 1: was dumb and naive of me. Apparently one of the
Speaker 1: first things people tried to do when gan technology got
Speaker 1: out of its got out of its research R and
Speaker 1: D Heidi Hole was to apply it to pornography, and
Speaker 1: pornography drives a lot of technology. I mean, arguably, there's
Speaker 1: a very good case to be made that the reason
Speaker 1: VHS won out over Beta Max was because the porn
Speaker 1: studios went with VHS.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't want to be crass or get too
Speaker 2: much away here, but I do remember far before this
Speaker 2: technology was available, when photoshopping was really the only option,
Speaker 2: there were sites, i want to say, early on in
Speaker 2: the Internet where it was just sites dedicated to celebrity pornography,
Speaker 2: where it was just photoshopped images on purpose. That would
Speaker 2: be pretty crazy applying it to video with this new technology.
Speaker 1: Yikes, black mirror esque, right, Like, imagine you are a
Speaker 1: creep with a crush on someone. It could be a colleague,
Speaker 1: a classmate, a celebrity, you know what, it could be
Speaker 1: an historical figure. Maybe King Touch just really does it
Speaker 1: for you for some reason.
Speaker 2: Actual King Touch, Yeah, the actual one.
Speaker 1: We know what the guy actually.
Speaker 2: Looks like now, and not Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: Not Steve Martin. He's one of the best banjo players
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 2: World, and he really does do it for me at least,
Speaker 2: but in this case, okay.
Speaker 1: So let's Steve Martin example. Then now there's nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with having a crush. It becomes creepy. However, if you
Speaker 1: use deep fake technology and put Steve Martin's face on
Speaker 1: the face of someone in a pornographic video, especially when
Speaker 1: the video will genuinely look real and it will sound
Speaker 1: like them. This is not science fiction. This is the
Speaker 1: idea behind a website with the immensely creative name Deep Nudes.
Speaker 2: Now, boy, Deep Nudes.
Speaker 1: Did exactly what we just described here. Luckily, the founder
Speaker 1: eventually canceled the site's launch and they had a public
Speaker 1: statement about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the founder actually eventually canceled launching the site,
Speaker 4: noting that quote the probability that people will misuse it
Speaker 4: is too high. Oh. I never would never would have
Speaker 4: thought that.
Speaker 2: What somebody's gonna misuse this.
Speaker 1: There's a great Mitchell and Web sketch about like an
Speaker 1: evil scientist where it's like I built the Ultra violence
Speaker 1: Lazer to save the world, not destroy it. Nice, I'll
Speaker 1: send it to you guys. Maybe we could post it
Speaker 1: on here's where it gets crazy. But that's just one use.
Speaker 1: That's the immediate one. And again I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 1: by a felt naive for not immediately assuming that's what
Speaker 1: would happen.
Speaker 2: I yeah, I think it's pretty obvious. It's just hey, cheers,
Speaker 2: guys for not always thinking about pornography.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just felt awkward when I was talking to
Speaker 1: some contacts about this off air and they looked at
Speaker 1: me like I was from you know, a different universe
Speaker 1: or time period. When they said, they're like, yeah, porn, Ben,
Speaker 1: it's that's why people have technology, is to get better porn,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. I don't know whether that's completely true,
Speaker 1: but it was a weird night. There's another use of
Speaker 1: deep fakes that is more apparent and has the potential.
Speaker 1: So like this fake pornography or this fake rendition of
Speaker 1: people in these intimate times, it can ruin an individual's life.
Speaker 1: It could be blackmail, and it could be blackmail. But
Speaker 1: there's another version of a deep fake, a weaponized deep fake,
Speaker 1: that could ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands or
Speaker 1: millions of people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because we can't forget that a lot of countries,
Speaker 4: including US, are very heavily entrenched in this notion of
Speaker 4: asymmetrical warfare called cyber war.
Speaker 2: Awkwardly, yeah, yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 4: Many world leaders have extensive, like you said, Ben, video
Speaker 4: footage out there of themselves at functions, giving speeches, events
Speaker 4: and the like. There's more than enough for Gan to
Speaker 4: work from here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's say, who can we use as an example?
Speaker 1: All right, Matt? He did Steve Berner earlier. Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So let's say let's say, Matt, you and knowl are
Speaker 1: the leaders of these different opposing countries. It's been a
Speaker 1: lot of tension for a while. Okay, So if there
Speaker 1: was someone either on one of your sides or a
Speaker 1: third party, let's say I'm a country that just messes
Speaker 1: with other countries for fun, right, I'm Russia, I'm the US,
Speaker 1: I'm one of the hits, right, And I say, you
Speaker 1: know what's going to be great. I can't take on
Speaker 1: no Landia or the Republic of Frederick with conventional military might.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to turn them, turn them against each other.
Speaker 1: I'm going to foment instability, or I'm going to mess
Speaker 1: with their election by just going on Facebook. I don't
Speaker 1: need to launch an ICBM. I'm just going to go
Speaker 1: on Facebook and Twitter. I'm going to make fake videos
Speaker 1: of leaders of both countries Landy and the Republic of Frederick,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to have him say things that they
Speaker 1: would never actually say. This sounds like a we're building
Speaker 1: toward a comedy bit, but there's a real, real fake video,
Speaker 1: multiple levels of Nancy Pelosi, a politician here.
Speaker 2: In the US.
Speaker 1: And have you guys seen this video? I have not
Speaker 1: seen this one, so it's it came out with a
Speaker 1: nice side by side view, but the deep fake video
Speaker 1: was also propagated on its own. It's very interesting to
Speaker 1: watch the difference between the two. This gives us a
Speaker 1: chance to rewrite history in a disturbingly or Wellian way.
Speaker 1: What happens if, for example, all original let's see Noel
Speaker 1: makes an historic speech in Nolandia that triggers a new
Speaker 1: golden age for the country, and someone destroys the original
Speaker 1: copies of this profound speech and replaces it with a
Speaker 1: deep fake. And then the last living generation, the less
Speaker 1: people who are there when the original speech was propagated,
Speaker 1: they can keep its memory alive, but when they die,
Speaker 1: history has in a very real way changed. Now.
Speaker 4: I don't know if this counts or not, but uh,
Speaker 4: there was a brief, brief period recently where there was
Speaker 4: some what I would consider deep fake gifts that were
Speaker 4: making the rounds. There's like Obama on a skateboard, there's
Speaker 4: one of the Pope doing a magic trick where he
Speaker 4: like pulls the the tablecloth out from under some kind
Speaker 4: of votives like at a like on an event like
Speaker 4: a live CNN stream.
Speaker 1: Which I choose to I know it's fake, but I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna believe in it.
Speaker 2: But they're so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wanted to believe in it as well, especially
Speaker 4: the Obama on a skateboard one.
Speaker 2: But is that kind of fall is that sort of
Speaker 2: fall under these this category.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a less dangerous version, you know,
Speaker 1: because that's fun. See seeing the Pope pull off a
Speaker 1: dope magic trick is not gonna like foment instability in
Speaker 1: South America. But going back to our example, let's let's assume, uh,
Speaker 1: the Republic of Frederick and Nolandia are kind of are
Speaker 1: beefed up to the level of like Pakistan and India
Speaker 1: or Israel and Palestine, and all of a sudden, in
Speaker 1: no traceable way, the public of both countries gets hit
Speaker 1: with this barrage of videos that seem to say, seems
Speaker 1: seem to have you know, the benevolent dictator Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: and the Prime Minister of no Landia and Noel Brown
Speaker 1: seems to.
Speaker 2: He's also a dictator by the ways, officially not in
Speaker 2: his title.
Speaker 1: Okay, so so the uh, let's these these guys have
Speaker 1: these videos wherein each of them are announcing their their
Speaker 1: intention to deploy nuclear weapons and mop the mop the
Speaker 1: adjacent country clean. Let no stone stand on another How
Speaker 1: would you know if you're the audience of this other country,
Speaker 1: how would you know whether these were real or fake?
Speaker 1: How would you react? How much time would you have
Speaker 1: if you think that you literally saw the leader of
Speaker 1: the country that you previously went to war with saying
Speaker 1: that's it, We're launching in five Well, it's.
Speaker 2: It's really scary because the way that would function, it
Speaker 2: would be posted somewhere and it would become viral on
Speaker 2: social media so greatly that's the only way that it
Speaker 2: would propagate, But it would propagate likely. And I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna say personally, what I would do in that situation
Speaker 2: is go to the standby that we discussed at the top.
Speaker 2: I would probably turn a TV on somewhere just to
Speaker 2: check and see if somebody is talking about it seriously,
Speaker 2: you know, on one of the major outlets. The problem is,
Speaker 2: what if you fool them. This happens all the time,
Speaker 2: even with quote unquote fake news.
Speaker 4: Everyone's so into getting the scoop with these the fast
Speaker 4: cycle the turnaround of news, that everyone wants to be
Speaker 4: the first, so they tend to not vet things like
Speaker 4: they used to, and that's how you often get these
Speaker 4: misreporting of election results, et cetera. You know, and this
Speaker 4: is just perfect example. If someone's like, here's a good example.
Speaker 4: There is a deep fake Donald Trump pe tape that's
Speaker 4: out there. What if that had been pushed out, you know,
Speaker 4: by let's say, you know, some a network opposing that
Speaker 4: the Trump administration, that didn't happen. Now that we know
Speaker 4: a little bit more about deep fakes being a thing,
Speaker 4: maybe there's some caution. No one wants to be the
Speaker 4: news agency that does that. But with an inflammatory enough thing,
Speaker 4: maybe you don't have time to think about it.
Speaker 2: Well see, yeah, here's here's what I wanted to bring
Speaker 2: up in the examples we're talking about with you know,
Speaker 2: a speech or something that exists. So you so, in theory,
Speaker 2: you would take the base level video of the speech
Speaker 2: and maybe maybe that audio. Then you'd manipulate the audio
Speaker 2: and then the face right or something to where the
Speaker 2: the words being spoken are different on that video. I
Speaker 2: think the scariest ones, the scariest versions of this are
Speaker 2: where it's supposed to be a hidden camera or something,
Speaker 2: where it's, like I was saying before, it's so degraded
Speaker 2: it's difficult to truly make out what's going on. But
Speaker 2: you can tell that, oh, that's definitely Billy Aikner. And
Speaker 2: where you can, you know your brain is at least
Speaker 2: telling you that, and it sounds like Billy Aikner's voice
Speaker 2: saying things.
Speaker 1: Who's Billy Aikner?
Speaker 2: Billy on the street. Billy on the street, I mean,
Speaker 2: and he.
Speaker 4: Was in Parks and Rack. He's the really like wound
Speaker 4: up guy from Eagleton that ends up working in the
Speaker 4: office when they combine.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you guys are here. Like, I recognize
Speaker 1: maybe three out of five Billy Aker.
Speaker 4: He's the guys that cost people on the street with
Speaker 4: a microphone and just yells celebrity names at them and stuff.
Speaker 1: I thought that was Will Ferrell doing Harry Carey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of, okay, but I'm sorry, I'm derailing this. Okay.
Speaker 2: The point is there's a there's a human being that
Speaker 2: you know that is famous for one reason, and of
Speaker 2: possibly powerful and their voice is being manipulated. But the
Speaker 2: video itself isn't something that you can reference to like
Speaker 2: a speech or to a movie or something that you
Speaker 2: remember you can verify with. It looks like a brand
Speaker 2: new video, but you can still tell that it's that person.
Speaker 2: Their mouth is moving and the words coming out are
Speaker 2: something awful.
Speaker 1: I feel like we're putting this in an accurate, humorous way.
Speaker 1: We do have to emphasize this is a very scary thing. Matt.
Speaker 1: You've built a beautiful example that leads us to another
Speaker 1: nefarious use of deep fakes, which will happen. It absolutely
Speaker 1: will happen, false accusations.
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, exactly so.
Speaker 1: According to Andrea Hickerson, who is the director of the
Speaker 1: School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of
Speaker 1: South Carolina, this is a problem because at the most
Speaker 1: basic level, deep fakes are lies disguised to look like truth.
Speaker 1: In the Hickerson says, if we take them as truth
Speaker 1: or evidence, we can easily make false conclusions with potentially
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences. So if you want to ruin someone's life,
Speaker 1: you want to smear a political opponent, or you just
Speaker 1: don't really like your neighbor, you don't like their their vibe.
Speaker 1: It just irks you. Then you could with this, with
Speaker 1: this capacity in the future, you would be able to
Speaker 1: make something where it appears that they're saying something terrible,
Speaker 1: where they're like, yeah, I don't kick and puppies, burning buildings,
Speaker 1: just whatever to feel something, you know what I mean. Also,
Speaker 1: I Le, I rent scooters and I leave them in
Speaker 1: the middle of the sidewalk because I'm that guy. I'm
Speaker 1: the one, and then it would look real. But if
Speaker 1: we go back to orwell, this becomes even more dangerous
Speaker 1: because we have to consider activism and heavy handed state actors.
Speaker 1: It's already dangerous to be an activist. To Knowle's example
Speaker 1: about Hong Kong. Right, people are in danger, people are dying,
Speaker 1: They're fighting an authoritarian massive state. So currently, state corporating
Speaker 1: criminal actors seeking to silence dissidents all use the ordinary
Speaker 1: tool kit of suppression, all the time tested stuff, all
Speaker 1: the smooth jazz, all the hits, threats, violence, kidnapping, smear campaigns, incarceration,
Speaker 1: disappearing and of course assassination the breakout single of suppression. Right,
Speaker 1: But soon even as we record this, state actors will
Speaker 1: have a new and powerful tool. If, for instance, you
Speaker 1: are protesting something and you are the leader, the face
Speaker 1: of activism, and say Hong Kong or one of the
Speaker 1: many other places around the world where protests are active,
Speaker 1: the authorities or the opposition would be able to make
Speaker 1: videos in which you are on camera disagreeing with the
Speaker 1: status quo, saying, hey, they were right all along. I
Speaker 1: had a change of heart, and I want to confess
Speaker 1: that my motives we're not pure. I was paid by
Speaker 1: someone else to do this, so I apologize. I'm turning
Speaker 1: myself in. And then the actual you finds out about
Speaker 1: this when your confession is aired on the news and
Speaker 1: people start contacting you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is an intense hypothetical currently situation.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I know, I know right now. It's just it is possible.
Speaker 4: Well, that leads us to a lot of things that
Speaker 4: need to happen or potentially are going to happen. And
Speaker 4: I want to lead with this. It's really interesting in
Speaker 4: the law now, and lawyers out there correct me if
Speaker 4: I'm oversimplifying this, But video evidence isn't like the end
Speaker 4: all be all already right, it has to fit a
Speaker 4: couple of requirements in order to be admissible in the
Speaker 4: first place, which is relevance and authenticity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with that chain of custody.
Speaker 4: Chain of custody is a lot of things that go
Speaker 4: into that, and we're going to get into that in
Speaker 4: a minute, and also potentially what might have to have
Speaker 4: happen as this technology gets better and better. But video
Speaker 4: evidence can be considered hearsay if there isn't someone to
Speaker 4: corroborate it. If it's the only evidence, that's not a
Speaker 4: great case that you know, an eyewitness. You know, I
Speaker 4: was just saying the good crime shows an eyeball witness
Speaker 4: is really your best bet to getting a conviction. Video
Speaker 4: and video alone, if that's all you got, especially if
Speaker 4: it's like grainy security cam footage, a lawyer could say
Speaker 4: that is not a reasonable representation of the subject being
Speaker 4: displayed or in question, et cetera. But what this comes
Speaker 4: down to is like, when is the log going to
Speaker 4: catch up to this new technology in terms of that
Speaker 4: chain of custody, Because that's the thing. If we can't
Speaker 4: believe our eyes, like we said at the top of
Speaker 4: the show, you said, Ben seeing isn't really believing.
Speaker 2: How do we authenticate this stuff?
Speaker 4: It's going to have to be that chain of custody
Speaker 4: that's kept under lock and key, so we know that
Speaker 4: the footage we're seeing was captured and then disseminated with
Speaker 4: no between.
Speaker 1: Right, Just video is nine enough. That's why Bigfoot will
Speaker 1: never see a day in jail ever. And he needs
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: There, he really does. But you know, here's the other thing.
Speaker 2: We can't trust our memories either. We're talking about in court.
Speaker 2: Video without corroboration from a witness doesn't work, and the
Speaker 2: witness is the best way, the eyewitness. But the eyewitness
Speaker 2: is very unreliable. It's perhaps the most unreliable thing that
Speaker 2: exists as far as evidence goes. So what the heck
Speaker 2: do we trust when it comes to evidence of something
Speaker 2: that actually happened.
Speaker 1: The approach is at what of accretion of aggregation? Right,
Speaker 1: you have to have multiple like nol said, you got
Speaker 1: to have multiple things so you can say you can
Speaker 1: triangulate a little bit, say, yeah, memories imperfect. We can't
Speaker 1: trust video alone. But we have a video, and we
Speaker 1: have a witness, and then maybe we have some other
Speaker 1: forensic evidence like a gun case, scenes of you know,
Speaker 1: spent shells were found and they match the gun.
Speaker 2: I completely agree, and you're right. What worries me is
Speaker 2: that what is stopping let's say, world leaders and powerful
Speaker 2: people who do wrong things where a video is an
Speaker 2: actual video is taken, maybe a surveillance cam video is
Speaker 2: taken of some wrongdoing occurring. Let's says as high as
Speaker 2: an assassination is something as dire as that occurs on camera,
Speaker 2: but there are no witnesses. But for sure, on camera
Speaker 2: there is a world leader shooting somebody in the head.
Speaker 2: What is stopping them from saying, oh, that's a deep
Speaker 2: fake video?
Speaker 1: Obviously, I'm so glad you said that, because that's the
Speaker 1: other side of the coin, right, If you are caught
Speaker 1: on video doing something despicable, doing something illegal, whatever, you
Speaker 1: can just say I have enemies, this was a deep fake.
Speaker 1: You know, my ex hates me, or I am I
Speaker 1: am doing work for I don't know whatever, a union
Speaker 1: or something or an NGO. So there's not a very
Speaker 1: good way to refute that other than having to resort
Speaker 1: to as much other corroborating evidence as you can. And
Speaker 1: then again you have to rely on, like you said,
Speaker 1: those eyeball witnesses, whose memories at times can be very
Speaker 1: financially motivated. Wow.
Speaker 2: So so in the end, we're relying on law, which
Speaker 2: is such an old concept, right.
Speaker 1: I think this is I think this is where we're going, Nolan.
Speaker 1: I know this is something we've talked about on this
Speaker 1: show so often because it's so important. Technology will always
Speaker 1: outpace legislation. If we finally get around to making a
Speaker 1: law about something, the horse has already left the barn,
Speaker 1: the you know, the detainee has already pulled the black
Speaker 1: hood off and as well on their way to international waters.
Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty nineteen, the US House Representatives
Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee sent a letter. They didn't pass anything. They
Speaker 1: sent a letter to the big socials Twitter, Facebook, Google,
Speaker 1: asking them how these sites planned to fight again and
Speaker 1: steep fakes, particularly in the twenty twenty election. And this
Speaker 1: all came about because remember we mentioned that deep fake
Speaker 1: video of Nancy Pelosi, House speaker here in the US.
Speaker 1: The current president, President Donald Trump, didn't just co sign
Speaker 1: that deep fake video. He retweeted it.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, when you say he wasn't just like saying, hey,
Speaker 4: watch out for this fake video of my friend Nancy Pelosi. No, no, no,
Speaker 4: he put it out there like he was implying that
Speaker 4: it was real. Yeah, he's a savage on Twitter too,
Speaker 4: as anybody knows.
Speaker 1: On Twitter. As a matter of fact, if you look
Speaker 1: at his record, he disagrees with himself extensively.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just it's one of those things where it
Speaker 2: really shows how convincing these things can be. I think
Speaker 2: back to I think we've mentioned it on this show before,
Speaker 2: but the Jordan Peel deep fake video of President Obama.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, where it looks like President BarackObama
Speaker 2: sitting at a chair in the Oval office somewhere and
Speaker 2: he's just saying weird things and it sounds pretty close
Speaker 2: to him, but it's actually just Jordan Peele doing a
Speaker 2: voice like a voiceover in the character that he's played
Speaker 2: before on Key and Peel, and it is it's pretty disturbing,
Speaker 2: and I think it speaks to how well Jordan's impression is,
Speaker 2: or how good his impression is, but it also speaks
Speaker 2: to the ability, this ability of matching that face, turning
Speaker 2: it into or or changing the way the president's mouth
Speaker 2: is moving to match the words. And if you imagine
Speaker 2: the technology that is coming out right now where you
Speaker 2: can take five seconds of any voice recording and then
Speaker 2: you can recreate that voice saying anything you want it to. Again,
Speaker 2: this is a small research project coming out of a
Speaker 2: couple universities, but you could if you combined that voice
Speaker 2: changing technology with the face changing and manipulating technology, you
Speaker 2: get to a point where it will truly be we
Speaker 2: will be unable to tell.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we know that therefore there's a ticking
Speaker 1: time bomb on this, right. So the presidential retweet of
Speaker 1: that deep fake video is what inspired the House representatives
Speaker 1: to send that letter. But this followed a request from
Speaker 1: Congress that occurred earlier this year in January, where they
Speaker 1: asked the d and I Director of National Intelligence to
Speaker 1: give a formal report on deep fake technology. It was basically,
Speaker 1: explain it to us so that we sound like we
Speaker 1: know what's going on with our constituents. And also, of
Speaker 1: course there's more than a little self preservation involved because
Speaker 1: these are members of Congress, right, so we know that
Speaker 1: we have to have legislation involved. But we also know
Speaker 1: there's a big chance that it's just not going to
Speaker 1: be enough. It's too easy to do this, it's too convenient,
Speaker 1: it's too powerful, right.
Speaker 4: Really quick in our industry, as podcasters. There's a there's
Speaker 4: an audio equivalent of this that's kind of on the
Speaker 4: on the horizon.
Speaker 1: Frank and Biting's next evolution very much so.
Speaker 4: I found out about this through a third party. I
Speaker 4: can't name names. I don't think it's technology that's really
Speaker 4: on the market yet. But literally, an algorithm that could
Speaker 4: sweep through our catalog. Me you, Ben and Matt run
Speaker 4: an algorithm on our catalog, and then you could feed
Speaker 4: it lines and it'll it'll approximate our voices. And I've
Speaker 4: heard it in action and it does a very convincing job.
Speaker 4: And on the one hand, we could say, oh cool,
Speaker 4: we don't have to read ads anymore. But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, we could say, oh no, we don't have
Speaker 4: jobs anymore, we don't need podcasting. I'm just saying, like
Speaker 4: the the the implications of stuff like this, it's always
Speaker 4: more far reaching than you would originally think.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's why Dan is ending Harmontown is
Speaker 2: because he's just gonna take all the voices and bottom
Speaker 2: together and make a whole new podcast that he can
Speaker 2: just write.
Speaker 1: Did I tell you I watched the last episode?
Speaker 2: I yeah, it was No, you didn't tell me, But
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you.
Speaker 1: Did touch it too. That was cool. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: mean end of an era for sure. But then now
Speaker 1: we have the scary proposition, and I think i'm I
Speaker 1: think I'm familiar with what you're talking about, NOL. We
Speaker 1: have the scary proposition where if someone has enough audio
Speaker 1: footage to pull from, then Harmontown would never have to end.
Speaker 1: It would just get really weird because the technology you
Speaker 1: would still need to evolve.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you that's what he's doing, guys, That's what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. Like he's gonna make Rob Shop say whatever
Speaker 2: he wants. It's gonna be amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll tune in. I'll tune in. If you guys
Speaker 1: are listening, let us know we would. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear it, and we applaud you for pioneering into
Speaker 1: this brave, new strange world. Government institutions like our favorite
Speaker 1: math scientists DARPA, and researchers at colleges like you had
Speaker 1: mentioned Matt Carnegie, Mellon, University of Washington, Stanford, so on,
Speaker 1: are also experimenting with deep fake technology. They're experimenting in
Speaker 1: two different but very related paths. One they want to
Speaker 1: figure out how to use it, how to make it better,
Speaker 1: and two while doing that, they want to figure out
Speaker 1: how to stop it. So think these goals are kind
Speaker 1: of contradictory unless they build in some kind of equivalent
Speaker 1: of a governor switch, you know, like for anyone unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with automobiles, some engines have a specific switch in there
Speaker 1: that limits the performance.
Speaker 4: Of the engine governor, right, Like in long distance trucks especially,
Speaker 4: there's a company. I only know this because I knew
Speaker 4: a guy that that was a long haul truck driver.
Speaker 4: And there's a company called Swift that everyone jokes in
Speaker 4: the industry stands for sure, wish I had a fast
Speaker 4: truck because they are notorious for putting governors on there
Speaker 4: that I guess it's a calculation you make as a
Speaker 4: business in terms of the risk, you know, versus like
Speaker 4: how fast can we get there versus how likely our
Speaker 4: drivers are going to drive too fast and potentially put
Speaker 4: themselves at risk and others, and you know, open up
Speaker 4: for liability and lawsuits. But yeah, that's absolutely a thing.
Speaker 1: So Bluebird buses would be another great example, and they
Speaker 1: have their own very interesting story.
Speaker 4: Bird scooters have digitally triggered governors, where like we have
Speaker 4: an area in town called the belt line where it
Speaker 4: GEO targets that area, and when you ride them on
Speaker 4: our belt line, which is like almost like the high
Speaker 4: Line in New York, it's like a walking trail, but
Speaker 4: you can ride the scooters. It does not allow you
Speaker 4: to go past a certain speed that you could go
Speaker 4: past elsewhere in the city.
Speaker 2: Man, I remember I had one on my ninety five
Speaker 2: Dodge Caravan. Talked it out right around.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the technological analog. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: bringing up governors switches because it seems like researching the
Speaker 1: improvement of the given technology while also researching a way
Speaker 1: to stemy that technology means that you would ultimately build
Speaker 1: in something like that, and ideally you would want it
Speaker 1: to be proprietary such that you would control it. So
Speaker 1: in a way, these institutions are competing. Who will control
Speaker 1: the nature of the truth and reality. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: a big question, but it's it's there.
Speaker 2: I think I think we need some kind of tech
Speaker 2: ethics board or you know, or advisory committee like techics,
Speaker 2: like like ethics, yeah, ethics, yeah, ethics. We should do that.
Speaker 2: We should get somebody to come through and like create
Speaker 2: something that everybody has to sign.
Speaker 4: Doesn't that have to be self imposed by like these
Speaker 4: tech companies, you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like, I don't know, if you get like a Gavin
Speaker 2: Belson or somebody like that, you could probably get everybody
Speaker 2: else on board, Like you know, a big name.
Speaker 1: You'd have to, uh, you have to ruin some people
Speaker 1: for an example. You'd have to ruin some people in
Speaker 1: the beginning for an example.
Speaker 2: Probably, But but I think you could. You could push
Speaker 2: it through.
Speaker 4: You just name dropped a fictional character. I just want
Speaker 4: to point that out to Wait what yeah, just huh,
Speaker 4: just putting that out there. Who any Silicon Valley fans
Speaker 4: out there trying to I'm trying to put something in
Speaker 4: there that you literally made me do a double take.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, like is he who is the How
Speaker 4: come I haven't heard of him?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, fiction.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to easter egg it.
Speaker 4: Sorry, dude, I shouldn't have said anything.
Speaker 2: He played along, but you played along perfectly. Oh thanks, man,
Speaker 2: that was beautiful.
Speaker 4: I really screwed it all. Sorry, Well, what what's next?
Speaker 1: Really? I mean? I think I think right now, regardless,
Speaker 1: there are people who are pro deep fake technology. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's a very convincing argument, all right, I think
Speaker 1: a very exciting argument that this can fundamentally change what
Speaker 1: we think of as film as entertainment because imagine you
Speaker 1: have the perfect role for an actor who has passed
Speaker 1: and you want them to be in your film. With
Speaker 1: this kind of technology, you can do it plausibly. And
Speaker 1: that means that, coupled also with machine learning writing of fiction,
Speaker 1: we could arrive I've had a time in our individual
Speaker 1: or collective lives where a film is made without human
Speaker 1: involvement on the creative ends. How insane is that? Forward
Speaker 1: to the future, I say, no, reduce.
Speaker 2: We know that other researchers are attempting to do that,
Speaker 2: like combining the different versions and types of neural networks
Speaker 2: to write a screenplay, to do some voice over at work,
Speaker 2: you know, to actually shoot video and edit video. It's
Speaker 2: all happening. It's just a matter of time. I think
Speaker 2: you're right on the money there, Ben, So.
Speaker 1: Where does this leave us for twenty twenty and beyond
Speaker 1: at a where to dilemma? Because it's really a matter
Speaker 1: of free expression versus true deception. According to Sharon Bradford Franklin,
Speaker 1: as a policy director for the Open Technology Institute out
Speaker 1: of New America. Deep fake videos threat in our civic
Speaker 1: discourse and can cause serious reputational and psychic harmed in
Speaker 1: vials right. They also make it more challenging for platforms
Speaker 1: to engage in responsible moderation of content, which is already
Speaker 1: a huge problem for anyone who's been paying attention to
Speaker 1: the latest news about Facebook. While the public is understandably
Speaker 1: calling for social media companies to develop techniques to detect
Speaker 1: and prevent the spread of deep fakes, we must also
Speaker 1: avoid establishing legal rules that push too far in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction and pressure platforms to engage in censorship of
Speaker 1: free expression online. So, to take your earlier argument, which
Speaker 1: again Matt, I love where someone says, that's not me,
Speaker 1: this is a deep fake. What happens if you were
Speaker 1: posting something, let's say you're an activist or you've a
Speaker 1: whistle blower or a whistleblower yes even better, and you
Speaker 1: propagate this film that is indisputable proof of the shenanigans
Speaker 1: you said we're occurring all along, and then the people
Speaker 1: who have their hands on the switches, their fingers on
Speaker 1: the faucet, they just say, oh, that's a deep fake.
Speaker 1: And they turn it off. We were always at war
Speaker 1: with a seysha. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's harroring when you put that at the endpen We
Speaker 2: were always with these things.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, but where do you where do you
Speaker 1: think this is going? I would say one person's opinion
Speaker 1: that it's it's going to continue. It will not disappear.
Speaker 4: I will say, if you want to see a really
Speaker 4: really jarringly good example of what this can look like,
Speaker 4: it's a video of.
Speaker 2: Bill Hayter.
Speaker 4: On is it the Letterman Show? No, yeah, it was
Speaker 4: an older a show, an old clip. It was an
Speaker 4: old clip. But it's a Bill Hayter. I believe it's
Speaker 4: The Letterman Show. It might be Conan and he's telling
Speaker 4: the story about meeting Tom Cruise at a party of
Speaker 4: some kind of it had to do with No, he
Speaker 4: was not what it was. He was in that movie
Speaker 4: Tropic Thunder with with Tom Cruise, and he sees he
Speaker 4: meets Tom Cruise at the premiere and Bill Hayter this
Speaker 4: point isn't like huge. He's an SNL. He's known for
Speaker 4: doing impressions, et cetera. So of course when he's telling
Speaker 4: the story, he's doing the Tom Cruise impression when he's
Speaker 4: doing Tom Cruise's parts of the story, and he's a
Speaker 4: great impression, and he's a great impressions and in this
Speaker 4: deep in his video, every time he starts to lapse
Speaker 4: into the Tom Cruise voice, his face turns into Tom
Speaker 4: Cruise and it is it is jarringly good and it's
Speaker 4: almos it's borderline like it makes your brain kind of
Speaker 4: like spasm.
Speaker 2: A little bit because it's just so good.
Speaker 1: He also does a great impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger and
Speaker 1: al Pacino, I want to say, and you can see
Speaker 1: the same technology of play. The Tom Cruise one, I
Speaker 1: would say is the best example because their faces are
Speaker 1: already a little more similar this.
Speaker 4: One, even though it goes a little further where he
Speaker 4: starts to do a Seth Rogan impression later and then
Speaker 4: his face becomes Seth Rogen. But the way it does
Speaker 4: it morphs where it just like for a split second
Speaker 4: it'll be Seth Rogen and then it's back to Bill Hayter.
Speaker 4: But the Tom Cruise parts are shockingly good. It doesn't
Speaker 4: look like mapping, it doesn't look like projection mapping, or
Speaker 4: you know, it really very much is like he becomes
Speaker 4: him and everything seems you can tell. It's like pulling
Speaker 4: from something that Tom Cruise did where he was acting,
Speaker 4: you know. Like, but like you said, Ben, this video
Speaker 4: that we're seeing doesn't really exist in the wild. It's
Speaker 4: like a you know, composite of like all of this
Speaker 4: stuff that's out there, right. Are you seeing it, Matt, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I've seen it.
Speaker 2: And there's the there's one that's called the Deep Fake
Speaker 2: Impressionist or Deep There's there's another impersonator.
Speaker 4: It's a Instagram account that I follow as well that
Speaker 4: it does a lot of these.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, all I know is this one guy
Speaker 2: that I've seen several videos of. I couldn't even tell
Speaker 2: you his name right now, but he got together with somebody.
Speaker 2: They made an entire video of non stop versions of
Speaker 2: this and it really is convincing crazy.
Speaker 1: And this is just the beginning. People will look back
Speaker 1: on this era as the halcyon days of discernible fakes,
Speaker 1: at least if this continues. Yeah, just the time of
Speaker 1: us knowing what was real and what was not right.
Speaker 1: Where do you see this technology going? Folks who want
Speaker 1: to pass the torch to you, let us know and
Speaker 1: on the way, send us your favorite deep fakes. You
Speaker 1: can post them on our community page Here's where it
Speaker 1: gets crazy. On Facebook. You can find us on Instagram,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter. You can also find
Speaker 1: every episode we have ever done on our website. Stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know dot com And.
Speaker 2: We don't put this out there enough. But as the
Speaker 2: holidays are coming around, remember we've got a te public store.
Speaker 2: So if you want to get some some awesome stuff
Speaker 2: they don't want you to know, gifts, whatever it is,
Speaker 2: mousetads do it, and you know that's look candidly and upfront.
Speaker 2: We get a tiny, tiny, witty bitty percentage, but you
Speaker 2: are supporting our show bye by doing this. The designs
Speaker 2: are cool, they're really cool. I genuinely wear my new
Speaker 2: red stuff they don't want you to know shirt all
Speaker 2: this time.
Speaker 1: Ben Ben's old school.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's awes the text version.
Speaker 1: They got Superman move right.
Speaker 2: Look, we feel weird wearing our own things, so a
Speaker 2: lot of times we do what Ben's doing. You put
Speaker 2: something over it, but when you wear it, it's almost
Speaker 2: like for me like having the Superman's thing on. You know,
Speaker 2: I wear the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Signature Tidy whities.
Speaker 1: What I wear these stuff? They don't want you to know. Snuggie,
Speaker 1: do you.
Speaker 4: Actually have custom made yes?
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: I don't think t public offers it and I had
Speaker 4: to outsource it.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, we have a good authority. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you guys get these texts too, but every
Speaker 1: time somebody buys something from the store, I get a
Speaker 1: text from Connell that just says one more day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not on that chain, but I'd like to
Speaker 2: get on there. That would be fun. Really, it would
Speaker 2: really just fuel my neurosis.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 4: It's right let us know what you think.
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