US Senate approves deepfake bill to defend against manipulated media
- Reference: 1605818153
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/19/us_senate_deepfake/
- Source link:
Introduced last year by US Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jerry Moran (R-KS), the Identifying Outputs of Generative Adversarial Networks Act ( [2]IOGAN Act ) aims to promote research to detect and defend against realistic-looking fakery that can be used for purposes of deception, harassment, or misinformation.
That's already happening. For example, security biz Sensity last month published [3]a report about a deepfake-making bot on the Telegram messaging platform that has taken social media images of hundreds of thousands of real women and rendered them so the subjects appear to be naked. These images, the company says, could potentially be used for public-shaming or extortion attacks.
And the Congressional Research Service claims there's evidence that foreign intelligence agents have used deepfake photos for social media accounts used to attempt to recruit sources.
The issue has been a matter of concern among US lawmakers for several years, prompting [4]hearings in 2019 and threats to hold online services accountable for failing to police deepfakes.
Facebook's $500k deepfake-detector AI contest drama: Winning team disqualified on buried consent technicality [5]READ MORE
The bill, S.2904, directs the US National Science foundation to support research into "manipulated or synthesized content and information authenticity," specifically the content produced by AI systems known as Generative Adversarial Networks(GANs), such as deepfakes.
It also requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop ways to measure and assess deepfakes and to investigate public-private partnerships focused on detected synthesized or manipulated content.
Companies like Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, along with academic institutions, are already conducting related research through initiatives such as the [6]Deepfake Detection Challenge .
In January, Facebook said it had revised its policies to support the removal of "misleading manipulated media," except where deemed to be parody or satire.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has two such programs underway: Media Forensics (MediFor) and Semantic Forensics (SemaFor). The first, according to the Congressional Research Service [7][PDF] , aims to develop algorithms "to automatically assess the integrity of photos and videos and to provide analysts with information about how counterfeit content was generated."
The second focuses on developing algorithms to "automatically detect, attribute, and characterize (i.e., identify as either benign or malicious) various types of deep fakes."
There's also [8]a related project that involves Georgia Tech researchers. They're trying to develop algorithms to generate synthetic, non-sensitive data that's related to real, sensitive information for GAN research, so scientists can analyze and test GANs without potential privacy problems.
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that S.2904, if approved by the House (H.R.4355) and signed by the President, will cost $6m in the 2020-2025 period. ®
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[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/2904
[2] https://www.cortezmasto.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cortez-masto-moran-introduce-legislation-to_combat-deepfakes
[3] https://sensity.ai/automating-image-abuse-deepfake-bots-on-telegram/?utm_source=morning_brew
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/13/deep_fakes_legal_protection/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/18/facebook_deepfake_kaggle_contest/
[6] https://ai.facebook.com/blog/deepfake-detection-challenge-results-an-open-initiative-to-advance-ai/
[7] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11333
[8] https://www.nist.gov/ctl/pscr/georgia-tech
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
See! Look! Trump did win the election!
Here is a 2021 video of his inauguration...
Below average observer
A young woman with long brown hair put on a long blonde wig, told me she was about to, and I wouldn't have recognised her. I'd only known her a couple of weeks but still, I assumed such a simple and announced deception wouldn't have confused me.
I had chatted for half an hour with a guy who I was then told was an actor, and he was prodded to 'do his thing', and he went into character. Again, I wouldn't have recognised him unless it had been announced.
I was walking with a friend and he said, "Wow, that was cold!"
I asked what was cold. "You just walked past your mum without saying hello."
I never noticed her. In my defence she hadn't noticed me, which explains where I get it from.
He wasn't such a great observer either, he paid too much focus on faces and not enough attention on environment. One time we were walking and a woman fell down hard on the pavement in front of us and he stepped over her and kept talking. He was aware of her as a walking obstacle just not as a person.
It also fails in reverse. I passed my worst enemy in a northern town neither of us had been to, clocked him, and thought nah, my mind is playing tricks. It was him.
I am the Dunning Kruger of observation so I don't trust my observations and verify three times.
TL/DR - You may feel superior but this is a serious problem for the bulk of society. Most of us are more easily fooled than we think we can be.
Sassy Justice to the rescue!
The south park guys will have done more to raise awareness on this issue than anyone else...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM