{"id":127180,"date":"2019-08-24T18:38:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T22:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=127180"},"modified":"2019-08-24T18:39:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T22:39:01","slug":"deepfake-manipulations-threaten-the-foundations-of-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=127180","title":{"rendered":"DeepFake Manipulations Threaten the Foundations of Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jordan Peterson: The deepfake artists must be stopped before we no longer know what’s real<\/h1>\n

I can tell you from personal experience how disturbing it is to discover a website devoted to making fake audio clips of you \u2014 for comic or malevolent purposes<\/em><\/h3>\n

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“Wake up. The sanctity of your voice, and your image, is at serious risk” \u2014 Jordan Peterson.National Post Photo Illustration<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

NATIONAL POST<\/p>\n

Something very strange and disturbing happened to me recently. If it was just relevant to me, it wouldn\u2019t be that important (except perhaps to me), and I wouldn\u2019t be writing this column. But it\u2019s something that is likely more important and more ominous than we can even imagine.<\/p>\n

There are already common fraudulent schemes being perpetrated by both telephone and internet. One known as the \u201cGrandparent Scam\u201d is particularly reprehensible, first because it is perpetrated on elderly people who are, in general, more susceptible to tech-savvy criminals and second because it is based on the manipulation of familial love, trust and compassion. The criminal running the Grandparent Scam calls, or emails the victim, pretending to represent a grandchild who is now in trouble with the law or who needs money for a hospital bill for an injury that can\u2019t be discussed, say, with parents, because of the moral trouble that might ensue. They generally call late at night \u2014 say at four in the morning \u2014 because that adds to the confusion. The preferred mechanism of money movement is wire transfer \u2014 and that\u2019s a warning: don\u2019t transfer money by wire without knowing for certain who is receiving it, because once it\u2019s gone, it\u2019s not coming back.<\/p>\n

Now what if it was possible to conduct such a scam using the actual voice of the hypothetical victim? Worse, what if it was possible to do so with voice and video image, indistinguishable from the real thing? If we\u2019re not at that point now (and we probably are) we will be within months.<\/p>\n

In April of this year, a company called Coding Elite exposed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that took a substantial sample of my voice, which is easily accessible on the YouTube lectures and podcasts that I have posted over the last years. In consequence, they were able to duplicate my manner of speaking with exceptional precision, starting out by producing versions of me rapping Eminem songs such as\u00a0Lose Yourself<\/a>\u00a0(which has now garnered 250,000 views) and\u00a0Rap God<\/a>\u00a0(which has only garnered 17,000) as well as\u00a0Rock Lobster<\/a>\u00a0(1,400 views). They have done something similar with Bernie Sanders (singing Dancing Queen<\/a>), Donald Trump (Sweet Dreams<\/a>) and Ben Shapiro, who also delivered\u00a0Rap God<\/a>. The company has a model, the address of which you can find on their YouTube channel, which allows the user to make Trump, Obama, Clinton or Sanders say anything whatsoever.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to imagine a technology with
\nmore power to disrupt<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I happen to think Rap God is an amazing piece of work, and when I first encountered my verbal avatar belting out the lyrics I thought that it was cool, in a teenage tech-geek sort of way. And I suppose it was. This caused quite a stir on the net in April, with media companies such as Forbes and Motherboard (a division of Vice) noting that the machine learning technology only required six hours of original audio (that is, actually generated by me) to produce its credible fakes, matching rhythm, stress, sound and prose intonation.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, a company called\u00a0notjordanpeterson.com<\/a>\u00a0put an AI engine online that allows anyone to type anything and have it reproduced in my voice. It\u2019s hard to get access to or use the site, at the moment, presumably because it is currently attracting more traffic than its servers can handle. A variety of sites that pass themselves off as news portals \u2014 and sometimes are \u2014 have either reported this story straight (Sputnik News<\/a>) or had a field day (Gizmodo<\/a>) having me read, for example, the SCUM manifesto (hypothetically an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men), a radical feminist rant by Valerie Solanas published in 1967. Solanas, by the way, later shot the artist Andy Warhol, an act, driven by her developing paranoia. He was seriously wounded, requiring a surgical corset to hold his organs in place for the rest of his life.\u00a0TNW<\/a>\u00a0takes a middle path, reporting the facts of the situation with little bias but using the system to have me voice very vulgar phrases.<\/p>\n