Can you recognize a digitally manipulated video when you watch one? It is more difficult than most people think. As the technology to produce realistic deepfakes becomes more readily available, distinguishing fact from fiction will only become more challenging. A new digital storytelling project at MIT’s Advanced Virtuality Center aims to educate the public about the world of deep counterfeiting with “In the Event of a Moon Disaster.”
This provocative website shows a fake “complete” fake (manipulated audio and video) of the President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, delivering the true contingency speech written in 1969 for a scenario in which the Apollo 11 crew failed was able to return from the moon. The team worked with a voice actor and a company called Respeecher to produce the synthetic speech using deep learning techniques. They also worked with the Canny AI company to use video dialogue replacement techniques to study and replicate Nixon’s mouth and lip movement. Through these sophisticated machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, the seven-minute film shows just how completely compelling deep fakes can be.
“Misinformation from the media is a long-standing phenomenon, but, exacerbated by deep technologies and the ease of disseminating content online, it has become a crucial topic of our time,” says D. Fox Harrell, professor at digital media and artificial intelligence at MIT and director. from the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality, part of MIT Open Learning. “With this project, and a curriculum from the disinformation course being built around her, our powerful XR creative director, Francesca Panetta, is driving one of the centre’s overall goals: to use artificial intelligence and virtuality technologies to support creative expression and truth. “
Alongside the film, moondisaster.org features a variety of interactive and educational deepfake resources. Led by Panetta and Halsey Burgund, a member of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, an interdisciplinary team of artists, journalists, filmmakers, designers and computer scientists has created a robust and interactive resource site where educators and media consumers can deepen their understanding of the deep counterfeits: how they are made and how they work; its potential use and misuse; what is being done to combat deep counterfeiting; and teaching and learning resources.
“This alternative story shows how new technologies can obfuscate the truth around us, encouraging our audience to think carefully about the media they encounter on a daily basis,” says Panetta.
Also part of the release is a new documentary, “To Make a Deepfake,” a 30-minute film from American scientist, which uses “In Case of a Moon Disaster” as a starting point to explain the technology behind the AI-generated media. The documentary features leading scholars and thinkers on the state of deep counterfeiting, on the risks to spreading misinformation and twisting our digital reality, and on the future of truth.
The project is supported by the MIT Open Documentary Lab and the Mozilla Foundation, which awarded “In Case of Moon Disaster” a Creative Media Award last year. These awards are part of Mozilla’s mission to achieve more reliable AI in consumer technology. The latest cohort of honorees uses art and advocacy to examine AI’s effect on media and truth.
J. Bob Alotta, Mozilla Vice President of Global Programs, says: “AI plays a central role in consumer technology today: Select our news, recommend who we date, and target us with ads. Such powerful technology should be demonstrably trustworthy, but it often isn’t. The Mozilla Creative Media Awards draw attention to this and also advocate for greater privacy, transparency and human well-being in AI. ”
“In Event of Moon Disaster” was presented last fall as a physical art installation at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize for digital storytelling; He was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival 2020 and Cannes XR. The new website is the global digital launch of the project, making the film and associated materials freely available to all audiences.
In recent months, the world has moved almost entirely online: schools, talk shows, museums, election campaigns, doctor appointments; everyone has made a quick transition to virtuality. When every interaction we have with the world is viewed through a digital filter, it becomes more important than ever to learn to distinguish between authentic and manipulated media.
“We hope that this project encourages the public to understand that manipulated media play an important role in our media landscape,” says co-director Burgund, “and that, with greater understanding and diligence, we can all reduce the likelihood of being unduly influenced by it. “
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