This will be not so much a series as a department that we visit from time to time…..as space permits. Today’s inaugural entry is astoundingly disturbing.
THE FALSE FUTURE – Recent developments in AI (Artificial Intelligence) have moved the world from the realm of FAKE NEWS to one of a PHONY FUTURE. The story starts with this. It was discovered on some VERY ADULT websites – [and I did not do this research myself] – that the faces of the ‘actresses’ in the videos had been replaced by some very famous and rich – (and definitely not-needing-the-money rich) female actresses. And this was not just some slop-job photo shop work. This looked absolutely real. These were not just short little clips but rather multi-minute videos that would easily fool those that watched them – had they not known that they were fake. The new faces were painted on the body using “a very simple but effective artificial technology.” The name for them is ‘Deep Fakes.’ This AI technology takes thousands of images off the internet, “every angle possible.” This process can go on for months. The AI program then trains itself in applying these images. Now this technology is not limited to ‘adult’ sites, but we can see the faces painted on figures in commercials. Nicholas Cage is one actor that comes to mind. Now one of the scary facts of this situation is that the software is easily downloaded off the internet – so anyone can get it. It has been downloaded in excess of 100,000 times in less than its first 2 months of being available to the public.[i]
One of the biggest dangers in this is the ability to have videos that would put an individual – say a target of the Powers-That-Be or the Deep State – in a situation that they were never really in. Someone could be framed for a robbery, a terror attack, a murder or sex crime; just about anything at all. The videos are that good! Journalist John Christian, writing for The Outline weighed in on the danger. “Deepfakes, a machine learning system that can be trained to paste a person’s face onto another person’s body, has experts concerned. Some fear that, unchecked, the system could down the road be used maliciously to hoax governments and populations, or cause international conflict.” This is certainly not out of the question. We’ve already had the scenario, in 2016 “a Pakistani defense minister read an article on awdnews.com, a fake news site, which falsely claimed that Israel had threatened Pakistan with a nuclear strike. In response, the Pakistani official Tweeted an atomic threat of his own: “Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear [sic] state too.”[ii]
Then add all of this to recently developed audio technology. Google can now mimic your voice with a sample of a couple of minutes. Combine the developing video editing and audio technologies and we could find ourselves filmed doing what we never did and saying things we never said.[iii] We are truly facing a Brave & False Future!
[i] Nothing Is Real Anymore, https://www.patreon.com/TheSecureteam, February 4, 2018
[ii] Jon Christian, Experts fear face swapping tech could start an international showdown, The Outline, February 1, 2018
[iii] Nothing Is Real Anymore, https://www.patreon.com/TheSecureteam, February 4, 2018
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