The Technology of Fake News

Today's Radiolab discussed the technology of fake news:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/breaking-news

1) Project Voco

Using tiny audio clips, researchers from Adobe and Princeton turn text into the words of anyone they'd like.    https://futureoffakenews.com/videos.html

2) Synthesizing Obama

Using a generic video of President Obama speaking, researchers at the University of Washington can match his facial movements to a totally different set of words. See this video  (see video below) 

3) Face2Face

Researchers at Stanford have found a way to let ordinary people control the faces of presidents, in real time.   https://futureoffakenews.com/videos.html

Fake videos are already here, and will only become more sophisticated. Here's a bit of the transcript that gave me chills:

IRA KEMELMACHER-SHLIZERMAN (Head if the Grail lab at Paul G. Allen Center at the University of Washington in Seattle).: Yeah, it's a good question.

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SIMON: But like, maybe it was the timing more than anything, but I saw this video and it really felt like, "Oh my God! Like, America can't handle this right now." Like, we're in a moment where -- where truth seems to be sort of a -- an open disc -- what is true is -- has become an open discussion. And this seems to be adding fuel on the fire of sort of competing narratives in a way that I find troubling. And I'm just curious that you don't.

IRA KEMELMACHER-SHLIZERMAN: I think that -- I think that people -- if people know that such technology exists, then they will be more skeptical. My guess, I don't know. But if people know that fake news exists, if they know that fake texts exists, fake videos exist, fake photos exist, then everyone is more skeptical in what they read and see.

SIMON: But like, a man in North -- I think he was from North Carolina, believed from a fake print article that Hillary Clinton was running a sex ring out of a pizza parlor in DC, which is, like, insane. This man believed it and showed up with a gun. And if people are at a moment where they are willing to believe stories as ludicrous as that, like, I don't expect them to wonder if this video is real or not.

IRA KEMELMACHER-SHLIZERMAN: So what are you asking?

SIMON: I'm asking -- well, I'm asking, do you -- are you afraid of the power of this? And if not, why?

(long pause)

IRA KEMELMACHER-SHLIZERMAN: Just -- I'm just giving my -- I don't know. It just -- I'm answering your questions, but I'm a technologist, I'm a computer scientist. So not really, because I know how to -- and I know that -- because I know that this technology's reversible. I mean, nobody -- well, there is not -- not worried too much.

What worries me is that she is only able to see herself "a technologist" and "a computer scientist," as if that absolves her of thinking about the moral implications of her work. In fact, when asked to speak about it, she was at a loss for words.