Minnesota activist releases arrest video after manipulated White House version

135 pointsposted 14 hours ago
by petethomas

29 Comments

nneonneo

13 hours ago

Don’t worry! According to the White House, it’s just a meme! Making up fake news is totally fine as long as you can say you’re memeing!

The WH using social media (X, Pravda Social) for official communication is highly deliberate - they get to declare post-hoc what is actually real communication and what is “just memes”. Of course it won’t make any difference to people amplifying the content. If the WH had to stick to traditional outlets for news they wouldn’t have this fig leaf to hide behind.

the_gipsy

13 hours ago

I remember reading an article about how terrible AI could be in the hands of a regime like China's. What a time to be alive, I guess.

bdangubic

12 hours ago

all this time we were “fighting China” and now we got China… except nothing gets done :)

salawat

12 hours ago

Evil transcends all borders, mate, and it all looks/sounds the same ultimately.

mattnewton

13 hours ago

I think we're never going to be able to have robust ai detection, and current models are as bad as they'll ever be. Instead we really need to have the ability to sign images on cameras that show these are the bits that came off this hardware unedited, that professional news outlets can verify.

But that's going to cost money to make and market all these new cameras and I just don't know how we incentivize or pay for this, so we're left unable to trust any images and video in the near future. I can only think of technical solutions and not the social changes that need to happen before the tech is wanted and adopted.

breve

13 hours ago

Sony cameras can sign still images and videos to vouch that they are not AI generated:

https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/index.html

https://www.sony.eu/presscentre/sony-launches-camera-verify-...

Ideally it'd become an open standard supported by all manufacturers. Which is what they're trying to do:

https://c2pa.org/

mattnewton

13 hours ago

Thank you, this is fantastic to know! I think we have to normalize requiring this or similar standards for news, it will go a long way.

Ideally we would have a similar attestation from most people's cameras (on their smartphones) but that's a much harder problem to also support with 3p camera apps.

2OEH8eoCRo0

13 hours ago

More like I won't trust anything that doesn't come from a press photographer.

cmxch

12 hours ago

And what will make them more trustworthy?

93po

13 hours ago

it doesnt really matter if you can just take a photo of an AI image that's been printed out

mattnewton

12 hours ago

That will look like a photo of a printout though. Seems easier to just hack the hardware to get it to sign arbitrary images instead.

throwaway89201

12 hours ago

This sounds like a good idea on its face, but it will have the effect of both legitimizing altered photos and delegitimizing photos of actual events.

You will need camera DRM with a hardware security module down all the way to the image sensor, where the hardware is in the hands of the attacker. Even when that chain is unbroken, you'll need to detect all kinds of tricks where the incoming photons themselves are altered. In the simplest case: a photo of a photo.

If HDCP has taught anything, it's that vendors of consumer products cannot implement such a secure chain at all, with ridiculous security vulnerabilities for years. HDCP has been given up and has become mostly irrelevant, perhaps except for the criminal liability it places on 'breaking' it. Vendors are also pushed to rely on security by obscurity, which will make such vulnerabilities harder to find for researchers than for attackers.

If you have half of such a 'signed photos' system in place, it will become easier to dismiss photos of actual events on the basis that they're unsigned. If a camera model or security chip shared by many models turns out to be broken, or a new photo-of-a-photo trick becomes known, a huge amount of photos produced before that, become immediately suspect. If you gatekeep (the proper implementations of) these features only to professional or expensive models, citizen journalism will be disincentivized.

But even more importantly: if you choose to rely on technical measures that are poorly understood by the general public (and that are likely to blow up in your face), you erode a social system of trust that already is in place, which is journalism. Although the rise of social media, illiteracy and fascism tends to suggest otherwise, journalistic chain of custody of photographic records mainly works fine. But only if we keep maintaining and teaching that system.

direwolf20

12 hours ago

Then you can have a signed picture of a screen showing an AI image. And the government will have a secret version of OpenAI that has a camera signature.

matthewaveryusa

13 hours ago

realpolitik time folks:

First do a left-right on the link that Aurornis posted [1]. Notice the extra fat in the chin, the elongated ear, the enlarged mouth and nose, the frizzlier hair, the lower shirt cut.

You hate it. You think, intellectually, that this shouldn't work and surely no one would have the gall to so brazenly do this without the fear of being caught and shamed. And then you think, well once the truth is revealed that there will be some introspection and self-reflection on being tricked, and that maybe being tricked here means being tricked elsewhere.

Well someone, in an emotionless room, min-maxed the outcomes and computed that the expected value from such an action was positive.

And here we are.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-levy-armstrong-crying-...

xrd

13 hours ago

Can I opt out of using my taxes to create memes? If Trump wants to use his cryptocurrency to shill for Truth Social I suppose I can't really complain. But, why do I have to pay for the department of meme wars?

camillomiller

13 hours ago

What else do you need, dear Americans? This is not who you are. Yet, by saying nothing, by thinking of tech as a neutral force, by working for the very companies that enable this, well, you are all silent accomplices.

Also, can someone explain to me why NOTHING of this is challenged in court or prosecuted? Where the hell is your judicial system?

gizmov21

13 hours ago

What, pray tell, can we do?

Tens of thousands of people are protesting and some getting arrested, anyone with a voice is doing what they can to sway public opinion.

Our higher courts are compromised (and feckless at times even when used correctly), and the police help ICE. And a large number of Americans do, in fact, want this. Others don’t care until it hits them personally.

So what specifically are people to do, like myself, who live in an unaffected area and who’s politicians are in fact speaking out against this?

autoexec

13 hours ago

> What, pray tell, can we do?

Vote better for a start. The amount of support this administration has is still way too high considering everything they've done and are doing. It's shaken my faith in humanity a bit to see how many of the people around me don't seem to actually value humanity.

psadauskas

13 hours ago

And most Americans are just trying to survive, working 3 gig jobs for barely minimum wage, while the cost of everything is skyrocketing.

defrost

13 hours ago

Indeed.

With all the deepest respect toward the US citizens I know, have talked to, and those that don't support the current administration ...

Theres's now _zero_ respect for the US.

Yours sincerely, long time five eyes allies.

mvdtnz

6 hours ago

This is who they are. Source: reality.

burnt-resistor

13 hours ago

Corruption and fealty run deep, and so does Democratic impotency (except for about 100 clean ones, but it's not even close to enough to make a difference) because their corporate masters desire it.