UK Opposition Leader Targeted By AI-Generated Fake Audio Smear (therecord.media) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Record: An audio clip posted to social media on Sunday, purporting to show Britain's opposition leader Keir Starmer verbally abusing his staff, has been debunked as being AI-generated by private-sector and British government analysis. The audio of Keir Starmer was posted on X (formerly Twitter) by a pseudonymous account on Sunday morning, the opening day of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. The account asserted that the clip, which has now been viewed more than 1.4 million times, was genuine, and that its authenticity had been corroborated by a sound engineer.
Ben Colman, the co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender -- a deepfake detection business -- disputed this assessment when contacted by Recorded Future News: "We found the audio to be 75% likely manipulated based on a copy of a copy that's been going around (a transcoding). As we don't have the ground truth, we give a probability score (in this case 75%) and never a definitive score ('this is fake' or 'this is real'), leaning much more towards 'this is likely manipulated' than not," said Colman. "It is also our opinion that the creator of this file added background noise to attempt evasion of detection, but our system accounts for this as well," he said.
Ben Colman, the co-founder and CEO of Reality Defender -- a deepfake detection business -- disputed this assessment when contacted by Recorded Future News: "We found the audio to be 75% likely manipulated based on a copy of a copy that's been going around (a transcoding). As we don't have the ground truth, we give a probability score (in this case 75%) and never a definitive score ('this is fake' or 'this is real'), leaning much more towards 'this is likely manipulated' than not," said Colman. "It is also our opinion that the creator of this file added background noise to attempt evasion of detection, but our system accounts for this as well," he said.
Starmer... (Score:3)
Best evidience it's fake. (Score:2, Funny)
Disclaimer: I don't know if it's fake or not. The jury is still out, although a lot of audio engineers and AI experts seem to think it's probably not fake, while others think it probably is. Also, I'm yet to hear that Starmer has actually outright denied it.
It can't be real, because Starmer is incapable of speaking for so long without telling you his father was a toolmaker. (credit: KernowDamo)
Re:Best evidience it's fake. (Score:4, Insightful)
The government's security minister, who is by the way a Conservative MP with no reason to hinder anything that hurts the opposition leader, has said that it is fake.
It's a pretty pathetic attempt to smear him anyway. I doubt many voters would care even if it was real. All he does is swear a bit at someone who appears to have forgotten to bring a tablet computer. Considering what his political opponents are like, and the immense damage that things like their behaviour during the COVID pandemic is doing as it is revealed through the official enquiry...
The next election will be lost on the economy. The Tories have trashed it, both through incompetence and through plundering it. There isn't enough time to turn things around before the election next year, and all Labour really needs to do is look half way competent and not say too much.
The danger is that the Conservatives, knowing they are headed for oblivion, get more and more extreme with their policies, whipping up even more anger and hatred, while grabbing all the cash they can on the way out.
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All he does is swear a bit
Considering british TV reporters bend over backwards to apologise if someone they interview uses foul language, I would say the voter cares for this a lot. Why otherwise would people who don't control the speech of others apologise for what they say?
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Thankfully, he's now weighed in on whether it was real or not! [youtube.com]
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The main concern will be the use of AI to manipulate votes.
Fixed that for you. Misinformation isn't a "us vs them" thing. Because "we" are just as guilty as "they" are. (You can pick which side is "we" and which is "they", it really doesn't matter.)
Who did it? (Score:2)
The Tories, in a vain attempt to cling to power because they know nobody in their sane mind would still vote for them after the past years?
Or Labor, in a vain attempt to make people realize that they not only still exist but also introduce Keir Starmer to an unsuspecting public?
No more "pics or didn't happen" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not too far in the future, we won't be able to know whether something is true, unless we witness it ourselves. Audio, video and photo manipulation, as well as forgery, have existed for a long time, but now it's getting to such a level of refinement that it's getting harder and harder to detect. It will be easy to deny anything as fake or hold anything as true.
You'll have to go to reliable sources (Score:2, Interesting)
The trouble with that is that it requires a much better educated populace. And the UK and US both have become very hostile to education, especially the kind of humanities education that's needed to learn critical thinking skills if they don't come naturally to you.
Re:You'll have to go to reliable sources (Score:4, Insightful)
It requires more than just an educated population; it requires someone to actually care enough about the topic to spend time and effort to dig into it. Often that is time an effort taken away from either your job or your family.
Now extrapolate that to a hundred different topics every day. As the old meme goes, ain't nobody got time for that.
The way you get people to care (Score:2)
You're treating "caring" with some inherent trait that only a select few are capable of. That's not how it works. Instead, a select few figure out critical thinking & claims evaluation on their own, sometimes by dumb luck, and without education and training the rest are easy marks ready to turn on you the moment a charismatic man tells them to.
Take me. I first noticed bullshit claims reading old Video Game Magazines. Specifically Video Games & Computer Entertainment, which
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Even with education it's hard. I have listened to conspiracy theorists for years. I can't disprove most of them. The only reason I don't just don't believe any of them is because most of them insist that you should do your own research. And just because of some nutjobs are among them doesn't mean that they are all wrong. Some conspiracies turned out to be real and some scientists lied.
Also, the news is too overwhelming, especially when it does not conforme with my world views and have to change them, which
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It's not necessary to completely debunk conspricay theories in order to discount them as possiblities. It's generally fairly easy to spot the logical fallacies inherent in them. Often they start from a false premise to begin with, but when they don't they'll make unsupported statements that require a false premise mixed with the correct premise, so it's a case of looking at each step in their logic to spot these.
Jordan Peterson is especially good at this. He'll often start from a truism but his next steps a
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it requires someone to actually care enough about the topic to spend time and effort to dig into it.
Spot on with this part. It takes a half-second to share some bullshit meme on TwitterBookInstaChatTok. It takes a far more considerable amount of time to determine if the content of that meme is actually bullshit, or how out-of-context a statement/picture/video was taken in order to make whatever point the creator was trying to make. There are only 3 really viable solutions: 1) Get people to care. 2) Shut down social media. 3) Get the aforementioned social media to "censor" what's on their platform. (Sh
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As if that matters at all anymore.
Even if you have conclusive, bulletproof evidence that someone did or did not do something, you'll have some conspiracy loonies that will believe the contrary for ... reasons.
We live in post-factual times. It doesn't matter anymore how something is. What matters is how people feel about it.
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See Moon landings.
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Worse are flat-earthers. Getting to effing moon is hard, and actual proof is not easily available. But round Earth? You can prove that the Earth is round using a effing stick!
Re:No more "pics or didn't happen" (Score:5, Interesting)
Its worse than that though. In the past a high quality forgeries often required special materials and equipment. Doing really good photo fakes took a lot of time.
We are moving into a period where quite possibly within the next couple years the average smuck will be able to create a high quality fake like, and do so for almost not cost in materials, time, or money.
Will we most likely also have the ability to identify forgeries and fakes, probably but it may require experts and days of analysis to do so, and leave a degree of uncertainty to boot. We certainly will not be able to cope if flooded with a large volume of junk.
The angle a lot of people are not consider is would campaigns or elected officials deliberately flood the zone with fakes that embarrass them which they can than discredit, to cover for an actual gaff, actual photo or audio statement of wrong doing; that they would claim is part of the disinformation campaign they are themselves actually behind?
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Will we most likely also have the ability to identify forgeries and fakes,
I'm sure the solution is something related to blockchain.
I say that only mostly in jest. I foresee a future where we are even more heavily reliant on "trusted" media organizations that can "authenticate" that an image/video/audio is authentic and unaltered. NFTs seem like a viable way to at least accomplish the "authentication" part. I don't know what to do about the "trusted" part, good luck with that.
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I am not sure how block chain NFT gives us anything more in the way of authentication than a plain old digital signature does.
Its 'A' way to prevent old leaked private keys from being able to be used to sign back dated materials I supposed, but as with mail relays etc, a few "trustworthy" parties resigning/additionally around the same time also accomplishes that.
It does not solve the problem. Did an anonymous whistle blower really provide that discretely made recording from their lunch with the senator -or
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I am not sure how block chain NFT gives us anything more in the way of authentication than a plain old digital signature does.
That's a fair point, really it accomplishes the same thing. Other than a blockchain of some sort is more "public". I'm obviously not any sort of cryptography/authentication nerd, so what I'm suggesting may be able to be accomplished in more "traditional" ways. I just want to be able to present a picture/video/audio recording and be able to unequivocally trace it back to the device it was originally recorded on, and have access to an unaltered "raw" format.
It does not solve the problem. Did an anonymous whistle blower really provide that discretely made recording
Everything after this sentence gets back to the "tru
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I mean when I'm presented with an image or recording from one of those types of organizations I am still cautiously optimistic that it's authentic.
Right which is my last point about the twin legs of them having some interest in protecting their reputation. I agree right now its reasonable to trust at least what they are showing you is real. But...
Do you trust that young reporter working for them, do think there is any shortage of people who might device sacrificing their career is worth it if it stops someone from being elected president, or sabotage a SCOTUS nomination something like that? I don't!
So I imagine $reported comes running to their edit
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Its going to be a mess!
Certainly can't disagree with you there.
Now imagine that in today's world of far more intense ratings pressure and competition for eyeballs
How about we just shut down the 24-hour news cycle channels? (Also said MOSTLY in jest. But I do think the "talking heads news channels" have done more harm than any political leader could dream of doing.)
$NEWS_ORG
$newsOrg Camel Case ftw. (sorry, I couldn't help that one.)
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$newsOrg Camel Case ftw. (sorry, I couldn't help that one.
Yeah that would better.
How about we just shut down the 24-hour news cycle channels? (Also said MOSTLY in jest. But I do think the "talking heads news channels" have done more harm than any political leader could dream of doing.)
Can't really argue with that! Trouble is if you shut them down the twitterati or Xers, whatever ... and ever fringe podcast gets to run wild with a story for some hours while the general public does not even get a source to look at which is done some fact checking. As bad 24-hour news has been, its also the only thing that keeps the internet in check.
Honestly I don't know what we can do about it. Turn off the internet does not seem viable. Trump (his own worst enemy, as this would
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Camel Case ftw.
Yeah that would better.
I expected way more pushback on this, lol.
But yeah, realistically the only way to "fix" this is to get people to quit automatically believing everything they read/see in the Internet. But hell, you have a large portion of the population who still has no clue how Facebook (and the like) can take down some stupid meme they shared almost instantly because of fact checking. I, like you, don't have a lot of faith.
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Not too far in the future, we won't be able to know whether something is true, unless we witness it ourselves. Audio, video and photo manipulation, as well as forgery, have existed for a long time, but now it's getting to such a level of refinement that it's getting harder and harder to detect. It will be easy to deny anything as fake or hold anything as true.
Obviously disinformation campaigns are easier, but the truth is still knowable.
For instance, you can deepfake the opinion of a trusted reporter, but you can't deepfake their news organization or personal website. So you can go to a trusted news website and know you're hearing from the real reporters. And those reporters can go and interview the real people. For instance, in this case they can find current and former members of his staff to see if the clip is consistent with his behaviour behind closed doors
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Leftist scums smear the Labour boss?
Is this an attempt at finding out at what point do conspiracy theories get too bizarre for even the most insane person to believe? Dude, you're up against "drinking piss against Covid", that's not even on the same level.
replace them all (Score:2)
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If we all chip in for a kickstarter, we could maybe buy a politician. You know, to actually represent the population for a change.
I know, outlandish concept, politicians representing voters. Maybe that's why nobody ever had the idea. I know, I have more such weird ideas. Ask me about "pursuit of happiness", another one of those loony things I could get behind.
X, Formerly Twitter (Score:3)
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Because it's shorter to just say "It's Ex", as in, formerly existing.
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Yes [wikipedia.org].
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I'd prefer a "sane" and "insane" split, but you know how it is, the loonies wouldn't stay in the bin.
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It feels like something the marketing dept came up with to increase its exposure.
That's actually pretty close. https://www.axios.com/2023/08/... [axios.com] Except it wasn't the marking department, it was King Musk himself.
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It feels like something the marketing dept came up with to increase its exposure.
That's actually pretty close. https://www.axios.com/2023/08/... [axios.com] Except it wasn't the marking department, it was King Musk himself.
It's more to do with Musk's rivalry with Zuckerberg.
- Zuckerberg had a big social media company so Musk brought a big social media company.
- Zuckerberg got into jiu jitsu so Musk got into MMA and wanted to fight him.
- Zuckerberg gave his company a stupid name so Musk gave his company a stupider name.
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Re:X, Formerly Twitter (Score:4, Funny)
When Elon came into power, Twitter removed their policy on deadnaming. I'd say it's fair play.
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It's Journalistic integrity. (Score:1)
It's not uncommon for a company to change it's name, and journalists will normally do you the courtesy of reminding reader of that for a period of time.
The fact that they're still doing it to this day shows that rebranding was both silly and an abject failure.
For my money I'm happy to see the platform die. It's clear Musk intends to turn it into a haven for people kicked off 4chan. Calling it "X" helps that along.
I mean, the one thing Twitter had
This sounded fake from the get-go (Score:2)
The idea that Starmer would have the courage to abuse staff to their face is ridiculous. He'd stab them in the back, like he and his buddies did with Corbin.
It seems that even in the face of the most appalling conservative leaders (Trump, Poilievre and Sunak come immediately to mind), neo-liberals somehow manage to find the most spineless, corporate-friendly, principle-free sludge puddles in politics to oppose them.
October AI surprise (Score:2)
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The Killian documents controversy (also referred to as Memogate or Rathergate) involved six documents containing allegations about President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard in 1972–73, allegedly typed in 1973. Dan Rather presented four of these documents[3] as authentic in a 60 Minutes II broadcast aired by CBS on September 8, 2004, less than two months before the 2004 presidential election, but it was later found that CBS had failed to authenticate them. Several typewriter and typography experts soon concluded that they were forgeries Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett provided the documents to CBS, but he claims to have burned the originals after faxing them copies. In the 60 Minutes segment, Rather stated that the documents "were taken from Lieutenant Colonel Killian's personal files", and he falsely asserted that they had been authenticated by experts retained by CBS.
...
The authenticity of the documents was challenged within hours on Internet forums and blogs, with questions initially focused on anachronisms in the typography, and the scandal quickly spread to the mass media.[12] CBS and Rather defended the authenticity and usage of the documents for two weeks, but other news organizations continued to scrutinize the evidence, and USA Today obtained an independent analysis from outside experts. CBS finally repudiated the use of the documents on September 20, 2004.
-- from Wikipedia
Although not specifically mentioned in the Wikipedia article, as I recall, the main reason that the documents were immediately considered fake is that it was obvious that they were printed on a laser printer.