The story is true, everything else is fake

October 15, 2021 9:55 AM

"The story of Veles being a fake news hub is real. The story of the Book of Veles’ discovery and forgery is real. But all the actual content is fake." The story of how a respected photo journalist took a deep dive into deep fakes and people's occasional lapse in judgment in giving news from a respected source a pass. Seen in this context it is hard to imagine how we wouldn't see these people (AND BEARS) as fake, but that is hind sight speaking. More here from Washington Post.
posted by stormygrey (12 comments total)

From the Post article: "Why do we give certain people a pass when it comes to believing what they do is valuable? Is it because they have won the right awards? Is it because they are members of the right club or group of people? Bendiksen’s book seems to make those ideas sort of laughable."

I conclude the opposite: We appropriately give more credence to written statements of fact from sources we judge trustworthy than from unknown sources or sources we know to have have been incorrect or misleading in the past. That includes both individuals (our doctor rather than an anti-vax neighbor) and institutions (the New York Times rather than the National Inquirer), although even trusted authorities can be wrong or provide incomplete information. Now we have to extend that approach to what seems like documentary evidence, such as photographs, audio, and videos.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:22 AM on October 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

I wrote a short science fiction story about the end of cryptography (the only successful cryptographic schemes will be way too expensive, in terms of the electricity use to encode and decode them, for anything except top level state secrets), and the rise in digital manipulation of photo and video, like the kind in this article.

In my short story, the result was that you can no longer trust any electronic communication, including email, text message, broadcast TV, etc. The only thing you can trust is meeting someone in person and physically delivering a message. Basically we'll go back to the Age of Letters again.
posted by subdee at 11:04 AM on October 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm still not sure I follow. So just the people (and bears) are fake, no other aspects of the images have been altered? So for example, this building exists, with all those windows, and just the person on the balcony and the people seen through the one window have been added? Or did he add/move/change the layout of the windows and the satellite dishes and the laundry?
posted by Rock Steady at 11:17 AM on October 15, 2021

"Just" all of the people and bears, the entire text of the article, and all of the pull quotes were computer-generated using entirely off the shelf components and no specialist knowledge, and it fooled all the industry experts, yes.
posted by subdee at 11:26 AM on October 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Rock Steady, it is a little unclear. I can see the powerlines in the cross-stitch aren't real, but other than that people (and bears!) are all I can really see. The entirety of the text of the book is also produced by AI.
posted by stormygrey at 11:27 AM on October 15, 2021

This is a pretty interesting take on what we define as "real" and who we allow to define "real". I'm just going to digest this for a little while and see what some of my photographer and art making cohorts think of this....
posted by djseafood at 11:42 AM on October 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

Swanwick's "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" stories are set in a future where computers have become completely unreliable. As I recall, there's malware being sent in the electricity.l
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:01 PM on October 15, 2021

2meta4me
posted by glonous keming at 7:57 PM on October 15, 2021 [1 favorite]

But the basic photos themselves are still real, just manipulated with people (and bears) added. Not quite peak fake yet.
posted by blue shadows at 2:20 PM on October 16, 2021

I almost feel like this is a double fakeout, because the people in the photos look pretty real and beyond what I expect a 3D amateur might be able to make. Would have been interesting to see the unaltered pictures.
posted by ymgve at 6:08 PM on October 18, 2021

The Washington Post pictures are actually much higher resolution if you open them in a new window.

Looking them at full resolution, I definitely see that the people aren't real. And the added film grain does a LOT of heavy lifting in concealing the fakeness. It's convincing on computer screens, but if these photos were shown framed on a wall they would definitely stand out as odd.
posted by ymgve at 6:39 PM on October 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

yngve, I agree, which makes it really strange that none of his photographer peers have noticed it. I suppose the context means a lot. If I was in a gallery filled with famous people I might still find some of the people in the images strange, but I might have credited the photographer for his talent for finding weird people who look like characters in a game.

Anyway, this is an amazing story. A lot to think about.
posted by mumimor at 1:37 PM on October 19, 2021