Kind: captions
Language: en
computer generated video to show
apocalyptic what if scenario threat to
National Security posed by Deep fakes
artificial intelligence artificial
intelligence manipulated by AI deep fake
photos welcome to the digital era in a
world where artificial intelligence can
conjure up images so real they're
virtually indistinguishable from reality
how do we discern truth from
fiction hi everyone I'm Ben and today
we're diving into a topic that's not
just fascinating but also crucial in our
information saturated World we're
talking about AI generated images
they're stunning realistic and
completely
fabricated and while they showcase the
marvels of modern technology they also
pose a significant challenge with the
rise of
disinformation in recent years we've
witnessed the power of disinformation
it's impacted elections news events and
human rights issues around the world
these aren't just lines of code creating
fun pictures they're tools that in the
wrong hands can have real world impact
shaping opinions and altering
narratives but here's where we can make
a difference by learning to spot these
AI generated fakes we arm ourselves with
knowledge becoming more critical
consumers of
information this isn't just a skill for
teeken through enthusiasts or digital
experts it's a critical tool for
everyone because in the fight against
disinformation every one of us plays a
role in this tutorial we're going to
look at platforms like this person does
not exist mid Journey Dolly and more
we'll learn how they work we'll see how
they've been misused and most
importantly we'll go through how to spot
these fakes whether you're a social
media buff a concerned citizen or just
curious about the digital world this
tutorial will be relevant for
you before we jump into each of the more
popular platforms it might be helpful to
cover some of the main tips on how to
detect
irregularities inaccuracies or
mistruths depicted in potentially
generated or edited
images there are five common tips to
look out
for first you should always look closely
at the image when looking at an image
focus on things like hands or faces or
positions of
eyes AI generated images struggle to
replicate hands realistically often
resulting in unnatural or awkward
positioning they also have an unnatural
gaze inconsistent lighting and sometimes
even stiff facial
expressions second look at the
background look for blurred or pixelated
elements sometimes there may be
Distortion in the reflections repeating
patterns which may indicate AI
generation third do an image RSE search
and we've gone through some of those
image RSE search platforms through my
ENT at home tutorials where we've used
things like Google Google Lens Yandex
Tini or others to check if the image
appears elsewhere online particularly on
AI related forums or
websites
the fourth tip is to verify the source
sharing the content does The credibility
of the account actually sharing it show
that it's an authentic account or that
it's
believable and the last one is to verify
the event or the claim itself if there's
a photo or a video of a fire or an
emergency event have there been other
reputable
resources posting about it sharing ing
images about it are there other people
talking about the event or the
claim so let's get stuck into the first
platform which is this person does not
exist this person does not exist is a
freely available website that applies
user generative adversarial networks to
create highly realistic human
faces when you click ref refesh on the
website you can see that it makes a new
face each time if you were to image
reverse search these faces you can see
that they don't exist on the internet
because these are faces that are newly
created faces and are not real people as
you go through the faces you can also
notice some similarities and get an
understanding of how the generation
works and how these faces are generated
while I'm clicking through some of these
faces you can also see some of the
obvious signs that they might be fake
faces for example the first thing is the
fact that the eyes are always in the
middle of the actual image if you were
to place your two fingers up to the
screen as I click refresh here which you
could even do now you can see that the
eyes are always in the exact same
location even when the face or the
composition of the face
changes what you can also notice outside
of the eyes is the failure of images to
actually blur
properly each one of these images has
issues with blurring or minute Clues as
to it being a generated image for
example if we have a look at the uh
bottom left of this image we can see the
blur bluring of this fabric down here we
can go through more and we can start to
see the odd complexion of some of the
faces and some of the poor levels of
blurring when you look and pay more
attention to the detail of these images
you can start to spot irregularities
throughout these images for example the
glasses go into the head here but seem
to cut through the the hairline over
this side when there's glasses there's
often uh mismatch blurring as well for
example here we can see the guy the side
of the guy's face we can also see the
outline here of where there may have
been glasses in the first place where
there is potential jewelry we can also
see that often the jewelry is mismatched
sometimes glasses Disappear Completely
as you can see with the frame here other
times there appears to be many odd
things going on in an
image sometimes you will also see body
parts or other people in images and you
can see that there appears to be some
morphing on the side of the image like
what you can see with what is
potentially a hand so what are some
examples of how generative adversarial
Network faces or Gan faces have been
used in campaigns before in an
investigation I did in the past with
bellingcat we identified a influence
operation or a disinformation campaign
operating within Indonesia targeting
human rights activists and the
information space within West Papa and
around West Papa what I was able to do
was to identify numerous accounts on
Twitter that were using these similar
styles of Facebook es which were likely
from this person does not exist or
another Gan style website and again you
can see that centrality of eyes meaning
the central location of the eyes in
these images which you can often match
up with straight lines but also for that
further verification looking at for
example the failure of the blending of
this cap and you can see some of the
images that we're able to identif ify
just for a further follow-up
verification to show that these are
indeed poorly Blended Gan images by
working with a researcher called Elise
Thomas we're able to trace back the
origin of this campaign to a marketing
firm operating out of Jakarta which
built these campaigns as part of a
professional package for digital
marketing Services these types of faces
used used as profile pictures for social
media accounts have been widely used in
information campaigns and we've seen
other networks use these for profile
pictures for example in this piece we
worked on with the BBC to identify
numerous accounts promoting Chinese
government narratives around certain
issues and again these same
identification features were used such
as the central location of the eyes and
those mismatch features of the blending
and blurring an analyst that regularly
identifies networks using some of these
AI generated faces is someone called
conspiradores runs a substack called
conspirator zero who I'll link to in the
description below and they are often
identifying information operation and
campaigns where these campaigns use
those images as their profile pictures
for the accounts that push out certain
narratives
disinformation or attempt to influence
specific subjects while we've been
looking at the site this person does not
exist there are also two other
websites uh that are quite commonly used
for this kind of work there is another
version of this person does not exist
this one allows you to select categories
of faces so for example allows you to
generate male faces of a specific age
group of a specific
ethnicity and generate faces in that
means another website which is called
generated. photos does this on a much
larger scale and allows you to look at
specific ethnicities and create faces
based upon your selection there as well
the second platform we're going to look
at is dolly or doll e however you want
to pronounce it and you can easily
access that through using chat GPT uh
which is found at open Ai and this is a
specific AI program that's capable of
generating detailed images from text
based
descriptions uh so you can generate any
kind of image based on what you write in
this text box down here so for example
we could ask for an image of a dog
sitting on the eye of London wearing a
cape as you can see I've created
something that is obviously not real and
obviously doesn't look real but
essentially is a way to create an image
based on a simple string of text that I
put in there if I was to try and create
a photo of the London Eye On Fire you
can see that the policies of GPT and
Dolly stop that from being created so
that you can see that the policies are
already in place uh and are continuously
growing to stop images being created
that may be for nefarious or harmful
purposes if I was to create a more
practical example to try and create a
realistic photo we can start to see the
limitations of what Dolly has so say for
example I want to create an image of a
dog in front of London ey to make it
look a little bit more realistic except
this time I'm going to include a prompt
to make this more
realistic as you can see even asking
Dolly to create a realistic image it
still includes this kind of filter over
the image similar to this image as well
and many of Dolly's cre Creations or
images have these kinds of almost
cartoonish kind of filters added to give
them that that kind of unnatural look as
though it's not a real photo so what's a
real world example where this platform's
image has been used well if we have a
look at news
outlets where they may not have images
to includ in their news articles about
certain things then we may be able to
find purposes there for example
in this article from next shark which is
about a former Facebook employee saying
that Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg was
waving a katana sword around the office
there's no imagery of that however these
two images which if you look at them
they're very poorly generated were used
as the kind of illustration or imagery
for this article because it didn't have
any images but what we can see is that
at the bottom of the article the
featured image was created using Dolly
mini by using Dolly we can also generate
faces as well so similar to where we
have this person does not exist which
would be used for a profile picture that
can also be created through Dolly
however that would look completely
different in comparison to what this
person does not exist have so looking
back on this person does not exist we
can see that these are very realistic
faces we have the centrality of the eyes
for dolly when we generate faces again
you can see what I mentioned with those
previous images we have this cartoon
style appearance which looks like a
animation filter that's added over the
top of many of doll's images moving on
to the third platform we're going to
look at Mid journey and mid journey is
similar to Dolly in that it's an AI
platform that generates or creates
images from textual description the same
as what we've just done before and it's
often used for artistic purposes or
generating interesting images editing
images as well changing images adding
color or or colorful
Creations mid journey is impressive
because it makes far more realistic
images than what dolly is capable of uh
and really showcases that diversity an
AI generated image based on prompts so
where you would add for example what we
did in the dolly one where we asked it
to create photo realistic or realistic
images this would actually do that and
would really listen or does really
listen to the prompts that you provide
or the commands that you give it with
mid Journey the platform that it uses or
that it that it communicates through is
Discord specifically what you do is you
communicate with the mid Journey bot in
providing prompts and commands to that
bot so in giving an example I'll hit my
forward slash and you can see the the
kind of things that you can ask the bot
for example you can ask it to blend
images uh you can ask it to write a
prompt based on an image so you can drop
an image in here and get it to write a
prompt for you I'm going to hit imagine
and I'm going to work on a prompt
similarly to what we did with Dolly
we're going to imagine a dog standing on
the London Eye in London with a cape or
wearing a cape except this time I'm I'm
going to take it a step further and ask
it to be a realistic image okay so we
have our images that have been generated
and we can see through these that they
look extremely realistic in comparison
to the ones that we created in Dolly it
almost looks as if I've taken my dog
popped that cape on it and taken a photo
of it within the London Eye Which is far
more realistic than the images that we
created in Dolly there so you've seen
how the platform Works what are some
real world examples where some of these
images have been used in disinformation
campaigns in one case last year an image
allegedly from mid Journey was
reportedly showing a explosion near the
Pentagon while there was quick
verification to show that this indeed
was not the case Emergency Services were
still alarmed and individuals were still
of the belief that there was indeed an
explosion or a fire near the Pentagon
however analysts quickly looked to see
that in the background of the image some
of the blurring was failed as we've seen
in previous AI generated images as well
and if we look at Elliot higgins's
Twitter posts where he used mid journey
to make pictures of trump getting
arrested while waiting for Trump's
arrest again this was not a real event
we can see some of those details there
around the hand the number of fingers as
well as the faces in the background if
you count some of the the fingers on the
hands and if you look at the details of
some of the hands like this person's
hand right here if you look at some of
the faces in the background you can see
that they have failed to blur properly
these are all common attributes of mid
Journey images where hands really do not
work too well unfortunately with images
like this so when Elliot put these out
even these images were then used by
other accounts to allege or say that
there was an arrest of trump however as
you can see in the notes under here from
the community notes people again
reminded individuals that these are fake
generated images while I've created a
quick example in mid journey and you you
can see these ones of Donald Trump there
have been far more advanced developments
by using mid journey and specifically
harnessing the use of prompts to make
photorealistic images one good place to
find these is through Reddit where
people are creating photo realistic
images using mid journey and very much
showing the full extent of how well they
work however if we look at these images
again we can see the subtle flaws that I
spoke about before such as the hands and
some of the faces so we can see this
person's face this person's face but
definitely the hands there where we have
mismatch fingers we have mismatch hands
and they appear to be in different
shapes so while this image looks
completely very close to realistic we
can see those subtle flaws still being
present there another way to identify
the flaw within a mid Journey image is
is the wording used in these images so
this uh very realistic looking image is
flawed by the fact that you can see the
wording and the generation of this image
has failed to actually make sense with
the wording so you can see the the
vehicles here the number plates the
wording on these patches the wording on
the side of this vehicle and even the
street signs over here are not of any
kind of language that's on this Earth
and they they mismatch and and really
don't make much sense and that comes
with a lot of mid Journey images that
the wording just never seems to work
out moving on to the next one is the
face app editor and this is actually an
application for phone devices you can
use this on both Apple and Android
devices I have this on my mobile phone
which I'll run through uh on the screen
here and you can see the ways that these
uh essentially allow you to edit faces
to demonstrate how this works on the
phone I'm using a iPhone and I'm going
to use the example of one of the faces
that we created using this person does
not exist to edit this person's image so
I can change the complexion of this
person uh but I can also change their
hairstyle as well to give her a bob cut
I can add a level of makeup I can add
dimples and then there are further
things such as changing and adding the
addition of a smile on that face as well
you can also change the age of someone
um to make them appear more
youthful uh or or indeed to make them
appear a little bit older so how have
applications like this where real faces
can be edited
how have they been used in real world
situations well we have an example from
India which you can see on this BBC
report here where the faces of two
athletes who were detained after a
protest where they were looking quite
sad in their original image and then how
this was uploaded to make all of the
people that were facing the camera
appear as smiling in order to make out
that this was indeed a joke or or that
they were happy and not actually serious
about what they were protesting about
the implications of this indicates that
there is an attempt to mislead the
public and by changing someone's facial
expressions shows that they're conveying
a different emotion in comparison to
what they were conveying in this
original image that they posted there
you can spot these by having a look at
the original context so if you have the
original image again as the five tips
that we went through at the start
consider considering the context of the
event which was considered here doing an
image reverse search of that image and
also questioning the account that
originally
uploaded uh both the original or the
manipulated version and what sort of
accuracy and Trust does that account
have as you can see each of these
platforms highlight different aspects of
AI generated imagery from creating
entirely new images to alter existing
ones and by covering these this tutorial
provides a comprehensive overview of
just some of the platforms operating in
the current landscape of AI image
generation and manipulation as well as
their implications in the realm of this
information to go back through those
five initial tips that we went through
when we're looking at these images we
first look closely at the image to have
a look at things like hands face pieces
then we look at second things in the
background looking for blurred or
pixelated elements or distorted
Reflections third we do an image reverse
search using things like Google or
Yandex or teni fourth we verify the
source sharing the content so checking
the credibility of the account sharing
it and then five and one of the most
important ones actually verifying the
event and the claim itself I hope you
enjoyed this session and I hope you
found it useful and I look forward to
seeing you in the next
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session