Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA10206 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 15 May 2002 16:18:11 +0100 X-Originating-IP: [67.243.218.19] From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Fwd: At MIT, they can put words in our mouths Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 08:11:52 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <LAW2-F116eFUtLch9wP00001aa6@hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 May 2002 15:11:52.0704 (UTC) FILETIME=[D80F1800:01C1FC22] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
People who believe anything they see on television are already lost.
Fooling them is a meaningless exercise.
Grant
>Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 10:41:05 -0400
>
>At MIT, they can put words in our mouths
>
>By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff, 5/15/2002
>
>http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/135/metro/At_MIT_they_can_put_words_in_our_mouthsP.
>shtml
>
>CAMBRIDGE - Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have
>created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said
>- a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the
>moving image.
>
>In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera,
>and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking
>entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a
>language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers
>consistently, the researchers report.
>
>The technique's inventors say it could be used in video games and movie
>special effects, perhaps reanimating Marilyn Monroe or other dead film
>stars with new lines. It could also improve dubbed movies, a lucrative
>global industry.
>
>But scientists warn the technology will also provide a powerful new tool
>for fraud and propaganda - and will eventually cast doubt on everything
>from video surveillance to presidential addresses.
>
>''This is really groundbreaking work,'' said Demetri Terzopoulos, a leading
>specialist in facial animation who is a professor of computer science and
>mathematics at New York University. But ''we are on a collision course with
>ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, then potentially
>all hell breaks loose.''
>
>The researchers have already begun testing the technology on video of Ted
>Koppel, anchor of ABC's ''Nightline,'' with the aim of dubbing a show in
>Spanish, according to Tony F. Ezzat, the graduate student who heads the MIT
>team. Yet as this and similar technology makes its way out of academic
>laboratories, even the scientists involved see ways it could be misused: to
>discredit political dissidents on television, to embarrass people with
>fabricated video posted on the Web, or to illegally use trusted figures to
>endorse products.
>
>''There is a certain point at which you raise the level of distrust to
>where it is hard to communicate through the medium,'' said Kathleen Hall
>Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University
>of Pennsylvania. ''There are people who still believe the moon landing was
>staged.''
>
>Currently, the MIT method is limited: It works only on video of a person
>facing a camera and not moving much, like a newscaster. The technique only
>generates new video, not new audio.
>
>But it should not be difficult to extend the discovery to work on a moving
>head at any angle, according to Tomaso Poggio, a neuroscientist at the
>McGovern Institute for Brain Research, who is on the MIT team and runs the
>lab where the work is being done. And while state-of-the-art audio
>simulations are not as convincing as the MIT software, that barrier is
>likely to fall soon, researchers say.
>
>''It is only a matter of time before somebody can get enough good video of
>your face to have it do what they like,'' said Matthew Brand, a research
>scientist at MERL, a Cambridge-based laboratory for Mitsubishi Electric.
>
>For years, animators have used computer technology to put words in people's
>mouths, as they do with the talking baby in CBS's ''Baby Bob'' - creating
>effects believable enough for entertainment, but still noticeably
>computer-generated. The MIT technology is the first that is
>''video-realistic,'' the researchers say, meaning volunteers in a
>laboratory test could not distinguish between real and synthesized clips.
>And while current computer-animation techniques require an artist to smooth
>out trouble spots by hand, the MIT method is almost entirely automated.
>
>Previous work has focused on creating a virtual model of a person's mouth,
>then using a computer to render digital images of it as it moves. But the
>new software relies on an ingenious application of artificial intelligence
>to teach a machine what a person looks like when talking.
>
>Starting with between two and four minutes of video - the minimum needed
>for the effect to work - the computer captures images which represent the
>full range of motion of the mouth and surrounding areas, Ezzat said.
>
>The computer is able to express any face as a combination of these faces
>(46 in one example), the same way that any color can be represented by a
>combination of red, green, and blue. The computer then goes through the
>video, learning how a person expresses every sound, and how it moves from
>one to the next.
>
>Given a new sound, the computer can then generate an accurate picture of
>the mouth area and virtually superimpose it on the person's face, according
>to a paper describing the work. The researchers are scheduled to present
>the paper in July at Siggraph, the world's top computer graphics
>conference.
>
>The effect is significantly more convincing than a previous effort, called
>Video Rewrite, which recorded a huge number of small snippets of video and
>then recombined them. Still, the new method only seems lifelike for a
>sentence or two at a time, because over longer stretches, the speaker seems
>to lack emotion.
>
>MIT's Ezzat said that he would like to develop a more complex model that
>would teach the computer to simulate basic emotions.
>
>A specialist can still detect the video forgeries, but as the technology
>improves, scientists predict that video authentication will become a
>growing field - in the courts and elsewhere - just like the authentication
>of photographs. As video, too, becomes malleable, a society increasingly
>reliant on live satellite feeds and fiber optics will have to find even
>more direct ways to communicate.
>
>''We will probably have to revert to a method common in the Middle Ages,
>which is eyewitness testimony,'' said the University of Pennsylvania's
>Jamieson. ''And there is probably something healthy in that.''
>
>Compare original and synthetic videos from MIT on www.boston.com/globe.
>
>Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com.
>
>This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 5/15/2002. © Copyright
>2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
>
>
>==============================================================This was
>distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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Grant
The means you use shape the ends you get.
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