[mabbo]

To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents?

And will you still be able to tell in five years, when this tech has had 20 new iterations, each addressing the very tells that right now let you notice it's fake?

I know, I know, photoshop and fake pictures have always been around. But now, everyone can do it in 30 seconds. That changes things.

[carlosjobim]

> To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents?

No, they won't. There's not a chance.

Yesterday we were visiting an elderly relative, who received a video in WhatsApp family group chat with an AI generated child saying a prayer. I had to repeatedly tell them it was not a real child on the video. To me it was obvious since the whole body was static and only the face was moving slightly, and the child was talking in a way that you knew it was text-to-speech.

There is sadly no hope for the elderly generation. If your parents or grandparents receive a video with your face, asking them for money - they will believe it. Even if you stand right in front of their face in real life telling them the video on their device is not real, they will believe it more than you. You will be considered not real rather.

[mabbo]

My sister tried to get my mother to play an April fools prank on me this year. She wanted her to send me an email saying "I got your voicemail and I sent the money! I hope that's enough but it was all I had available!"

My mother thought it was a bad idea and didn't want to get involved.

It would have been incredible and I would absolutely have fallen for it.

[wnkrshm]

Anecdata: Reportedly my great grandma, born in the 19th century viscerally reacted to things that were fictional movies of the 1960s like they actually happened. She could not distinguish between recorded news and recorded drama.

I think it's a matter of our 'priming', what we're used to: If you're used to digital recordings that seem real to actually be real, you'll be tripped up.

If you have no such expectation, you're less inclined to buy into the reality of something that is shown to you. That you have to believe some version of events that you pick up is a false dichotomy.

You can also not believe any version until you get more substantial proof.

[morkalork]

What was life like 150-200 years ago? Back then you had only the written word to go by for news of the outside world and it was just as easily manipulated. I think we've been living through a brief and unique period of truth-y-ness with a plethora of photographic and video evidence.

[throwuwu]

Agreed, we’ve been hoodwinked by photos and video and this is the wake up call we need for everyone to realize that seeing an image of something is in no way comparable to actually being there. We’re about to enter a much more skeptical world and that’s a good thing.

[jmondi]

A healthy amount of skepticism is good. You can easily take your skepticism too far and turn into a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who doesnt believe anything and has a completely cynical view on the world. I know a few of these...

[throwuwu]

A healthy amount being defined as 90%

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

[dahart]

Interesting thought. Sturgeon’s Law is normally referring to the quality of things created honestly, like sci fi novels, and not to the level of dishonesty or disinformation. I’ll have to think about whether those are actually different, but I feel like it’s relevant in the sense that Sturgeon’s Law is normally tautological: you can decide for sci fi novels what percent of them you would define as “good”, and the rest are “crap”. 90% always works, but so does 80% or 98%, the top group is always better than the bottom group by definition. So in that sense, saying that 90% of information might be dishonest and justify skepticism isn’t supported by Sturgeons Law, I think.

[hammyhavoc]

What about the tinfoil hatters that believe everything just because it's on some 2h YT video?

[JumpCrisscross]

> What about the tinfoil hatters that believe everything just because it's on some 2h YT video?

Classic contrarianism. Where evidence of pushback is used as evidence of the argument itself. It's commonly used by cults to increase cohesion, e.g. sending members into the world to get rejected.

[uvnq]

That's a case of not enough skepticism

[hammyhavoc]

After seeing the QAnon folks, I think you'll just see in-fighting about what the "truth" is, when in reality, both sides are full of shite but for different reasons.

[Frummy]

Rest in peace to saying "pics or it didn't happen" I guess

[dragonwriter]

> To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents?

Well, my parents and grandparents are dead, so probably not.

But, when they were alive, they had enough experience of the real world that they would be suspicious of bandages worn outside of clothes, the printed document wrapped around the arm, and the gauze that rather than wrapping fully around the head seamless merges into the forehead.

But, more importantly, it would be trivial to do what all the really successful fake images of this war and most precious ones have done: just take a real picture, from a real conflict (sometimes, even the same one) and lie about the context. Lying with pictures is not a novel threat.

[tinideiznaimnou]

>But, when they were alive, they had enough experience of the real world that they would be suspicious of bandages worn outside of clothes, the printed document wrapped around the arm, and the gauze that rather than wrapping fully around the head seamless merges into the forehead.

Would they have noticed them at the quick glance that this image invites? Assume an astute person but with media literacy based on:

* newspapers (where fake photos are possible but more primitive), and

* TV (where the image is moving and appears on the screen only for you to notice it, but not to examine it closely).

* also possibly from the tiny screen of a janky smartphone mandatorily plugged into the dark forest of social media.

At a glance, this hypothetical person would likely see something like "a guy was hurt in a war, he is now miserable in a hospital, here he is, _there is no other information in this picture_, read on". And then they are more likely to pay a little more attention to the text, because they just saw an image containing things that prime them for experiencing compassion.

Disregarding that experience becomes outdated, and the target audience for propaganda also includes inexperienced people and those who never developed good thinking habits in the first place, elderly people are also more likely to have degraded senses, and may be less interested in playing "spot the 10 differences" than a young digital native absolutely fascinated with this fun new technological development.

I for one spotted none of the things that were wrong with the photo, even though some of them were really obvious. But I didn't look twice until seeing them pointed out in the replies. And even then, I though "maybe it's a scratch that only takes a large band aid and not a full bandage, what the hell do I know about bandaging a head anyway" (defaulting to trusting the image and excusing inconsistencies). And, since, the context was being already established by the poster so I didn't even look twice. Besides, now that many camera phones have "AI smoothing filters", that blurs the boundary even more, making real photos look AI generated. The overall "AI smoothness" that I noticed about the image (where it's the "notional" resolution that is degraded, not the rasterization) might be completely lost on people who are visually impaired, or just don't stay up to date with the novelties of image processing.

So I fall back to the same heuristic that your grandparents, bless them, probably also used: if it's on the news, it's somewhat fake by definition. And how much attention you should pay to it depends on how much your interests align with those of whoever's paying for you to see it.

Ofc, becoming stuck in a local optimum bubble of fake perceptions that confirm each other, and gaining a "political identity", is nothing new, either. Our generation just got blindsided by the idea that computers and the Internet would somehow make this fuckery less necessary. Can't wait to see what scams would target me when I'm old but my elderly parents did fall for a fake phone bill because the guy brought it in person - once again, no AI necessary, neither is there a viable way for AI to help with this problem. (AI doorbells recognizing scammers I guess? but that can turn real dystopic real fast.)

[dragonwriter]

> Would they have noticed them at the quick glance that this image invites?

Probably; I mean, it took me more than a quick glance to even figure out that the thing that looked like a discontinuous strip of printed cash register receipts with red stains across the outside of his sweater was probably supposed to be bandages, even with the priming effect of reading the text. And the document wrapped partly around his arm is quite jarring.

But, ultimately, may main point isn’t that AI images are categorically unconvincing—I’ve generated more convincing AI images. But AI barely matters; the same training data that enables AI image generation contains thousands of images that can be used, without modification, with a false caption to the same effect — and not just in theory, but this is actively done all the time. While AI may increase the risk of convincing fake imagery of specific individuals (though that, too, has been common before AI image generation), the kind of generic propaganda highlighted here is both simple and a hundreds-of-times-a-day thing with more convincing imagery without AI.

[rainsford]

Does it actually change anything? Maybe AI will led random people make their own pictures, but what's the real impact of that compared with what those people are likely already doing, which is repeating propaganda created by others using only marginally more involved methods like photoshop?

Also the particular image in this tweet doesn't seem like a great example of the power of AI propaganda. Unless I'm missing something, it's a fairly generic image of a nameless person...the propaganda is all in the story attached to it. The same story attached to a stock photo seems like it would have virtually the same impact.

[jruohonen]

One distinguishing factor to previous times is the almost infinite volume (quantity) that is now available to propagandists throughout the world. Soon enough (if not already), it is possible to automate and continuously update thousands or even tens of thousands of websites full of AI generated propaganda. If platforms are not careful, the same goes for AI bots and the like.

[Bran_son]

> To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!", consider: will your parents/grandparents?

Doesn't matter. The best propaganda isn't fake, but truthful. It emphasizes true stories that further its goal, and de-emphasizes or buries stories that hinder it. E.g. https://ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html

[amerkhalid]

It works other way too. This elder person I know refuses to believe anything bad about his motherland by claiming it is fake news/propaganda. Even when it is reported by the biggest news agencies in both, his motherland and the west.

[nkjnlknlk]

The ageism is silly (though not uncommon on HN). Plenty of young people are in the same boat and in the west! It's nothing new. Discerning propaganda has always been extremely difficult.

[amerkhalid]

Sorry didn’t mean to come across as ageist. I’m in older crowd too.

It is just my personal experience. I didn’t want to say exact relationship but this person is related.

I know there are plenty of young people who also block facts that contradict their views, sadly.

My point was more about that people will also use fake news/generated media as an excuse to deny facts.

[detrites]

I don't think it does change things. There's only going to be a certain percent of people who want to do bad things. It would fluctuate surely, but historically it doesn't appear availability of new technology affects it much, if at all.

The relevant statistics I can think of (crime/violence etc) show nefarious acts worldwide on the decrease. So, if there is something linking them and tech it may be the reverse of what popular commentary seems to expect.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Better question is will you be able to tell it’s fake if you’re scrolling without critical thought? If you’re not paying attention? If you’re on low sleep, stressed, nodding off, watching a stream in another screen, etc? If it’s only presented to you in a small icon while your favorite debate bro debates on it, or a political pundit pundits over the thumbnail?

[theptip]

Agreed. Scrolling past pre-coffee I didn’t look too closely at the the details, and only on second glance did I spot the (in hindsight) obvious flaws.

This is like how I could smuggle two “the”s into the previous paragraph without most people noticing; we skim more often than we realize.

[boredChimp]

You sneaky bastard

[paganel]

> To those saying "Oh I can tell it's fake, obviously!",

I couldn't tell the photo was fake from a first or second glance, only after I had started reading the posts and taking a 3rd and 4th look at it I could sort of notice some uncanniness.

But, even then, had no-one told me that the image was fake I would have certainly continue to at least have some doubts about the image's fake-ness.

[sangnoir]

> But now, everyone can do it in 30 seconds. That changes things.

Does it? I've seen limited amounts of text-based propaganda / misinformation and anyone can do it 30 seconds, yet somehow we're not drowning in a flood of it. Society got better at verifying textual information, even though some individuals remain susceptible. In my chat groups, it is always the same 2 people that fall for - and propagate - scams/snake-oil/misinformation regardless of the medium.

[ActorNightly]

If the Trump era has shown anything, whether the piece of information is real or fake, people will believe and act based on ideals.

[red-iron-pine]

That is explictly the idea of a lot of propaganda: "the firehose of falsehood".

Keep hammering them with facts, details, allegations, baseless claims, even slivers of truth. The average person doesn't have the time, interest, or capabilities to dig through all of those claims, and will eventually settle on consuming the facts they want to hear. Keep em too confused to do anything except what feels right to their gut.

Unsurprisingly, this was pioneered by the Soviets, and heavily used by the Russians, both via foreign agit-prop, but also heavily on their domestic audience.

See also: The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

[AnimalMuppet]

You can think of it as "ain't nobody got time to sort through all of that". Or you can think of it in Bayesian terms. If you adjust your priors at all based on propaganda, and there's enough of it, then eventually your priors become what the propaganda says.

[ActorNightly]

Not quite.

The more important thing is to plant a core idea in someones brain. If someone thinks that liberals are all degenerate scum that want to degrade society, no amount of anti republican propaganda is going to convince them otherwise.