The new technique distorts reality in a much larger way. That hasn’t been there before. When everybody has this in their smartphones, we will look at manipulated pics on an hourly basis. That’s unprecedented.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Okay so it’s the verge so I’m not exactly expecting much but seriously?
No one on Earth today has ever lived in a world where photographs were not the linchpin of social consensus
People have been faking photographs basically since day one, with techniques like double exposure. Also even more sophisticated photo manipulation has been possible with Photoshop which has existed for decades.
There’s a photo of me taken in the '90s on thunder mountain at Disneyland which has been edited to look like I’m actually on a mountainside rather than in a theme park. I think we can deal with fakeable photographs the only difference here is the process is automatable which honestly doesn’t make even the blindest bit of difference. It’s quicker but so what.
Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
TheFriar@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
It used to take professionals or serious hobbyists to make something fake look believable. Now it’s at the tip of everyone’s fingers. Fake photos were already a smaller issue, but this very well could become a tidal wave of fakes trying to grab attention.
Think about how many scammers there are. Think about how many horny boys there are. Think about how much online political fuckery goes around these days. When believable photographs of whatever you want people to believe are at the tips of anyone’s fingers, it’s very, very easy to start a wildfire of misinformation. And think about the young girls being tormented in middle school and high school. And all the scammable old people. And all the fascists willing to use any tool at their disposal to sow discord and hatred.
It’s not a nothing problem. It could very well become a torrent of lies.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
TheFriar@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Your point being…?
I mean…we can all see those are inanimate, right? But that doesn’t even change my point. If anything, it kinda helps prove my point. People are gullible as hell. What’s that saying? “A lie will get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to pull its boots on.”
A torrent of believable fakes will call into question photographic evidence. I mean, we’ve all seen it happening already. Some kinda strange or interesting picture shows up and everyone is claiming it was AI generated. That’s the other half of the problem.
Photographic evidence is now called into question readily. That happened with photoshop too, but like I said, throw enough shit against the wall—with millions and millions of other people also throwing shit at the wall—and some is bound to stick. The probability is skyrocketing now that it’s in everyone’s hands and the actually AIgen pictures are becoming indecipherable from photo evidence.
That low effort fairy hoax made a bunch of people believe there were 8in. fairies just existing in the world, regardless of how silly that was. Now, stick something entirely believable into a photograph that only barely blurs the lines of reality and it can be like wildfire. Have you seen those stupid Facebook AI pages? Like shrimp Jesus, the kids in Africa building cars out of garlic cloves, etc. People are falling for that dumbass shit. Now put Kamala Harris doing something shady and release it in late October. I would honestly be surprised if we’re not hit with at least one situation like that in a few months.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Come on, science fiction had similar technologies to fake things since 40s. The writing was on the wall.
It didn’t really work outside of authors’ and readers’ imagination, but the only reason we’re scared is that we’re forced into centralized hierarchical systems in which it’s harder to defend.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I mean, sure, deception as a concept has always been around. But let me just put it this way:
How many more scam emails, scam texts, how many more data leaks, conspiracy theories are going around these days? All of here things always existed. The Nigerian prince scam. That one’s been around forever. The door-to-door salesman, that one’s been around forever. The snake oil charlatan. Scams and lies have been around since we could communicate, probably. But never before have we been bombarded with them like we are today. Before, it took a guy with a rotary phone and a phone book a full day to try to scam 100 people. Now 100 calls go out all at once with a different fake phone number for each, spoofed to be as close to the recipient’s number as possible.
The effort input needed for these things have dropped significantly with new tech, and their prevalence skyrocketed. It’s not a new story. In fact, it’s a very old story. It’s just more common and much easier, so it’s taken up by more people because it’s more lucrative. Why spend all of your time trying to hack a campaign’s email (which is also still happening), when you can make one suspicious picture and get all of your bots to get it trending so your company gets billions in tax breaks? All at the click of a button. Then send your spam bots to call millions of people a day to spread the information about the picture, and your email bots to spam the picture to every Facebook conspiracy theorist. All in a matter of seconds.
This isn’t a matter of “what if.” This is kind of just the law of scams. It will be used for evil. No question. And it does have an effect. You can’t have random numbers call you anymore without you immediately expecting their spam. Soon, you won’t be able to get photo evidence without immediately thinking it might be fake. Water flows downhill, new tech gets used for scams. The like a law of nature at this point.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Wise people still teach their children (and remind themselves) not to talk to strangers, say “no” if not sure, mind their own business because their attention and energy are not infinite, and trust only family.
You’d be wary of people who are not your neighbors in the Middle Ages. Were you a nobleman, you’d still mostly talk to people you knew since childhood, yours or theirs, and the rare new faces would be people you’ve heard about since childhood, yours or theirs.
It’s not a new danger. Even qualitatively - the change for a villager coming to a big city during the industrial revolution was much more radical.