[HN Gopher] Fake images that fooled the world
___________________________________________________________________
Fake images that fooled the world
Author : sandebert
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-04-12 07:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| djoldman wrote:
| A great example that underscores the _ordinariness_ of AI. It 's
| a tool and tools can be used for good/bad/neither and inbetween.
|
| Fake pics have existed since pics existed pretty much.
|
| Kids have been looking for ways to cheat on tests since tests
| began. If you're a teacher, you're gonna have to test in person.
|
| Fake phone calls, fake other things... yea they're of a
| different/better quality as the technology has gotten better. Is
| it so fundamental a shift that nothing can be done? I'm not
| convinced.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| The ease of cheating/creating fakes surely influences how much
| cheating/fakes are in circulation, and while we can tolerate a
| little, excessive amounts will be disruptive. So many
| technologies moved from obscure curiosities to mass adoption
| just because somebody made them easier/cheaper to use.
|
| If at some point the cheats/fakes will be cheaper and easier
| than the real thing, you can bet _that_ will be a fundamental
| shift in how we approach the world.
| tgv wrote:
| It's not only the excess, it's the ease of access. Kids can
| produce lewd pics of class mates, and make their lives hell.
| This technology is fundamentally evil.
| smegger001 wrote:
| With as easy and widespread it is I wonder how long before
| the general assumption will be that nude pics and videos
| are fakes and will loose its power. It will be just another
| ai porn on the mountain of other shitty ai porn.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I know it's not the same - but I remember the "bubbling"
| phase a few years back. It was a bit messy and fortunately
| faded away pretty quick
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| So tired of this lazy argument. Projectile murder with bows
| existed before guns. Guns changed the world. A severe force
| multiplier for something bad can't automatically be handwaved
| away.
| djoldman wrote:
| Guns have little use beyond injuring or killing or
| threatening the same. On the good side: one could argue it's
| sometimes good to kill for hunting. On the bad side... well
| there is a lot of suicide, murder, and potential for the
| same.
|
| I'm not sure we understand yet how much positive and how much
| negative potential there is in AI.
| wruza wrote:
| Variations of guns (high pressure tubes with plugs) also
| shoot nails, pilings, and can quickly split hard surfaces
| like rocks or pavement. They are also natural parents of
| internal combustion engines.
|
| Not arguing, just saying.
| tgv wrote:
| What good can it be used for? Because I haven't seen anything
| that makes faking pics with AI so good we can ignore the
| negatives.
|
| The article also seems to take the relativist stance: nothing
| new to see here, move along now. Why? For the clicks? Just
| being contrarian?
| djoldman wrote:
| Many manifestations of generative AI allow people to put
| concepts onto screens faster. It generally serves as a more
| efficient translator of "I want a contract like this one but
| more tailored to [new client]" or "I want to make a strategy
| for my [new business]."
|
| In information economy jobs, translating thoughts and ideas
| into better formal communications more efficiently is
| valuable. Be it pictures or text.
| tgv wrote:
| A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the
| value of nothing.
| vfclists wrote:
| What!!?? No mention of the Apollo 11 photos?
| mcphage wrote:
| Or the round globe!
| a3w wrote:
| Or Hillary Clintons green scaly skin
| the_af wrote:
| I agree photo manipulation has always happened, to various
| degrees of perfection, since the dawn of photography.
|
| I suppose the real difference is that before it took a more
| artisanal, time-consuming process, and now -- increasingly -- it
| takes far less time to create something convincing enough. Same
| with video: you could fake a video, do editing, etc, but it took
| time, skill, a location where to shoot, etc. Now it's becoming
| easier to do for everyone. And it's not perfect yet, but are we
| sure it won't get there? And it doesn't _have_ to be perfect
| anyway, it just has to fool most people in a given window of
| time.
| excalibur wrote:
| Surprised the article makes no mention of the 2023 AI-assisted
| enhancement of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot clip. It's definitely
| a guy in a gorilla suit.
|
| https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/bigfoot-footage-ai-sigh...
| the_af wrote:
| Is there any doubt it's a gorilla suit? I think the article is
| disingenuous in not stating this clearly.
|
| The article claims the suits of the apes in Planet of the Apes
| were "unconvincing", but they are _just_ as convincing as the
| Bigfoot image, which is to say: they are clearly (nicely made)
| costumes.
|
| We didn't need AI to "prove" what was already evident. And let
| me assure you -- this won't convince conspiracy theorists and
| Bigfoot fans, because above all, like Mulder, they "want to
| believe".
| icameron wrote:
| Why does stabilizing the image make it any more or less
| apparent?
| the_af wrote:
| I think it just means it removes the distractions of the
| grain and shaky camera.
|
| But really, it was always evident it was a guy in a gorilla
| suit.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| How could AI not make it look more like a man? Was the AI
| trained on lots of bigfoot footage? Or was it trained on lots
| of pictures of people? Give it enough leeway and it will
| probably render bigfoot as a man in a Barney costume, if that
| better confirms to the training data.
| CharlesW wrote:
| AI wasn't used to generate the clip, but to add some
| (hallucinated) detail and extend the background. FWIW, in
| pre-genAI stabilized examples from the 2000s it's also
| clearly a guy in a gorilla suit.
| the_af wrote:
| The article is interesting, but I think it conflates two things:
|
| "Things that never happened in the real world, and have been
| either created synthetically or with visual trickery"
|
| - Man jumping into the void.
|
| - Stalin's edited photos (Stalin didn't walk without Yezov at his
| side).
|
| - North Korea's photoshopped/cloned hovercraft.
|
| - The Cottingley Fairies, Loch Ness monster, "saucer" UFOs:
| visual trickery or props employed to simulate the existence of
| beings or vehicles that don't exist in the real world.
|
| - Pope with jacket is of course completely faked with AI.
|
| And
|
| "Things that happened, but are staged or misrepresent
| reality/mislead the viewer".
|
| Examples:
|
| - The UK soldiers abusing a prisoner. The claim was probably
| false (in the sense in this particlar photo these weren't British
| soldiers) but it's true they were soldiers from _some_ country
| abusing a prisoner. To my knowledge no-one claimed the photo was
| staged, just that it was misrepresenting the situation.
|
| - Capa's Falling Soldier photo. This actually happened, it's just
| that it's likely staged.
|
| They are not the same thing, and require different levels of
| skill!
|
| AI facilitates creating _anything_ , especially completely
| synthetic and fake. You don't even need to go to the location to
| take a photo and edit it.
| david-gpu wrote:
| And some of the photos are labeled as "fake" with zero evidence
| that they are, indeed, fake.
|
| I personally don't believe in Bigfoot, but the article presents
| no evidence of that particular shot being altered or staged in
| any way.
| mcphage wrote:
| They don't know specifically how it was done--but it is, in
| fact, fake.
| the_af wrote:
| I mean, it's obviously a guy in a gorilla suit. It walks
| like a guy, nothing about its "gait" is animal-like. A
| gorilla suit is well understood technology, it's just that
| this one was nicely made and not a cheap costume party
| suit.
|
| Same with the guy who made saucer-like UFO photos. This is
| obviously dishware, only people who "want to believe" would
| be puzzled by the photos.
| david-gpu wrote:
| There is a difference between beliefs substantiated by a
| gut feeling and beliefs substantiated by evidence. Like
| you, I have a gut feeling that it is, indeed, a person in a
| suit, but I do not have any evidence for that. The
| distinction is important in my mind.
| the_af wrote:
| I agree it's not evidence, but even then, going by the
| principle of parsimony (which does not provide evidence,
| but is a reasonable way of thinking about this) the most
| likely explanation is also the less extraordinary or
| convoluted: a guy in a gorilla suit. Why reach for
| anything else, unless one _wants to believe_?
|
| The existence of yetis is an extraordinary claim that
| would require convincing evidence by their proponents, of
| which this video isn't one (since it's trivial to film a
| guy in a suit, etc).
| vunderba wrote:
| Thought it might be a fun exercise to see how little time it
| would take to create similar approximations of the original
| deepfakes using GenAI models.
|
| https://mordenstar.com/blog/historic-deepfakes-with-ai
| Reasoning wrote:
| "By the 1940s, the image without the groom had become the
| standard version, and it created the enduring visual signs of the
| strongman leader - when Nigel Farage makes a speech atop a tank,
| or Vladimir Putin displays his bare chest, both are drawing on
| iconography developed by the Italian fascist."
|
| Ah yes, equestrian portraits, something famously invented by the
| fascists. Someone should dig up Jacques-Louis so we can tell him
| he's a fascist now.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-13 23:01 UTC)