Comment by tentacleuno | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tentacleuno | Hacker News Reader

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> “What’s up guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me … ” she says, before the screen transitions into AI-generated photos that resemble her. A voice imitating the actor continues speaking to promote the app: “It’s not limited to avatars only. You can also create images with texts and even your AI videos. I think you shouldn’t miss it,” the fake narration says.

As AI gets better and better at this, how do we reasonably deal with the obvious ramifications? I'm sure some form of "this is me in this video / image" attestation has been given before, but that has its own downsides: namely, you have plausible deniability if you don't attest to that (e.g. if the video is of you being racist, etc.), plus how would the attestation process even work?

AIs imitating humans is genuinely scary, and I'm wondering what sort of technical / legislative safeguards are being put in place. I remember the case of a mobile app that allowed users to imitate Trump and Joe Biden; they were, of course, used to attempt to manipulate people into voting for a certain side.

Even if AI isn't perfect now, the only way is up. Soon, I'm betting it'll be very hard to discern what's AI-generated and what's real.

Really terrifying stuff.

> AIs imitating humans is genuinely scary

Eh, we got through photocopied signatures fine. The transition will be rough. But I wouldn’t get scared.

Now we have to get through the period of an AI generated version of you signing a document with a notary over zoom.

Your honor, we created an ai model of a blonde humanoid and named her scarlet and told it generate off of a movie star look. We then created a voice ai trained on people impersonating a well known actress.

I wonder how that will go in court.

Quite well for Scarlett, at least in the US (your jurisdiction may vary). It's established that if you get a look-alike actress, maybe a voice-over person who sounds like her, and make an ad implying it's actually her and she endorses the product, you lose[1]. Do you think AI makes this different?

[1] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c29600ca-8ef8...

"Conclusion: Celebrity endorsements in advertising have long been viewed as a better way to bring attention to a brand or product than an advertisement with unknown models or actors, which is why celebrities can command such a high price for their endorsements. Some celebrities even chose not to appear at all in any commercial advertising, which the right of publicity (and the right of privacy) empowers them to do. When companies are not successful in properly securing the legal right to use a celebrity’s image, identity, voice, or persona in an advertising campaign, they may be under the mistaken impression that it is nevertheless permissible to use a look-alike or sound-alike, in order to evoke the celebrity’s image in the minds of the public in connection with its own product, while not actually using the celebrity’s image. However, the right of publicity and the false endorsement branch of the Lanham Act give celebrities powerful tools to correct any such mistaken impression."

edit: pronoun clarity

For example :

https://www.punknews.org/article/21912/tom-waits-wins-anothe...

Doesn’t look good for the defense. One difference I do see here is that there is an explicit disclaimer present on the ad if I am reading it correctly. That sort of disclaimer may work well for South Park but I don’t know about this.

Judges hate the "oopsie whoopsie did we do that? ;)" defense.

The solution is all real actors will have QR code formatted certificates on them at all times that you can scan to verify chain of trust.

Hey! Blockchain might actually be useful for something!

A qr code wouldn't do much...

> I'm wondering what sort of technical / legislative safeguards are being put in place

None?

I don't think any new ones are needed. You don't need any special attestation. This company broke the law, ScarJo is suing them, and she'll win. The courts are well equipped to handle this with normal procedures, such as the simple fact that there is no contract signed with her.

As for political stuff, they can similarly be sued for libel/defamation/etc. And again, it's fairly trivial to figure out -- videos all come from somewhere, with a camera person who can testify, etc. If you have a video of Trump/Biden saying something that seems fake, and you suddenly "can't remember" where you got it, and it didn't exist on the internet until you posted it... it's really not that hard.

Photographs have been manipulated since 1846. It's pretty easy -- the more unusual or suspect something is, the more proof we demand (witnesses, corroboration, credibility, etc.).

The courts are well equipped to handle this with normal procedures

Be careful there. Your enlightened legal jurisdiction isn't all legal jurisdictions and some have some ideas we'd find pretty weird.

But yes, in the US, see: Lanham Act.

People have been imitating celebrities for a very long time.

What's your point?

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