DARPA to launch efforts that will bolster defenses against manipulated media

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-03-14

by geox • 2 years ago

65 103 2 years ago

darpa.mil

iamacyborg5• 2 years ago

A good place to start might be in mandating some level of media literacy in the national curriculum.

Media Studies tends to be a bit of a meme but it’s becoming increasingly important.

consumer4513• 2 years ago

The issue is that it will be seen as "political" if one political side's media happens to be cited more often in examples of misinformation, and one will.

iamacyborg5• 2 years ago

I don't think there'd be an issue in finding sufficient material for any political side.

ptero2• 2 years ago

That is a solvable issue -- give examples of manipulation and misinformation for both sides in roughly equal quantities. There is no shortage of examples for any argument.

Nothing helps making people manipulation resistant like seeing manipulation from the side of the argument they support.

jonnyone• 2 years ago

Media (and corresponding manipulation) could be created specifically for teaching purposes, aiming to keep the material as apolitical as possible while still retaining the techniques of manipulation.

mark_l_watson• 2 years ago

Right on. Also just having the same high quality US civics classes, like I had when I was a kid, would help young people develop scepticism, learn the value of reading good books, often classic books, instead of hours on social media.

While I think the Patriot Act was a horror show for the health of our country, and I am suspicious of the very broad reach of the proposed ban TicToc legislation, the military system also does a lot of good work that benefits our society in non-military ways.

5424582• 2 years ago

Agreed. This is a social problem and no amount of technical solutioneering will solve it. A significant chunk of the US believes Obama is a Muslim and/or Kenyan on the weight of approximately no evidence. Large numbers of people treat images of people with glossy skin and mangled hands on Facebook and Instagram as photographic fact. VFX videos that would be lambasted as amateurish and unconvincing in a film are treated as undeniable evidence by many commenters on YouTube and TikTok. These are not highly sophisticated lies, and yet many people accept them uncritically because they haven’t learned any better.

jfengel2• 2 years ago

They have in fact learned the opposite. We've spent decades carefully separating ourselves from even the most obvious critical thinking skills that a child would employ. Long before sophisticated disinformation tools people readily slurped up the most obvious lies.

I'm really at a loss.

93po• 2 years ago

yet many people accept them uncritically because they haven’t learned any better.

The political establishment doesn't necessarily want critical thinking - they just want you to believe their version of lies. People uncritically accept anything negative about Trump all the time and people who own media channels don't want that to change.

greg_V• 2 years ago

Just mandate all media to be in latin, and maintain a class of experts versed in the language to interpret it to the masses.

tjpnz• 2 years ago

Throw in some basic statistics too? Many of the graphs cookers throw into their Instagram posts are from real studies but have been manipulated to push misinformation.

MyFedora• 2 years ago

How useful is it to teach media literacy when nobody applies it? I'd argue it's the opposite of useful: Harmful. People who learned media literacy feel more resilient against disinformation, but they likely don't care enough about any single news piece to apply the frameworks to verify whether anything is indeed correct. So, quite ironically, the fact that they feel more resilient against disinformation makes them more susceptible to disinformation than the average uneducated person in terms of media literacy.

Figure out how to teach media literacy correctly before spreading the current, rather flawed media literacy teachings, so we don't end up with more wannabe media literate people who are actually more susceptible to disinformation than the average person.

iamacyborg5• 2 years ago

How useful is it to teach media literacy when nobody applies it?

How can people apply something they've not been taught?

netbioserror• 2 years ago

"Media literacy". Aka, "How to interpret everything through the horse blinders and funhouse lens of the dominant neoliberal ideology of the US ruling class."

iamacyborg5• 2 years ago

I'm British and thinking about this in that context, not an American one, for what it's worth.

SubiculumCode2• 2 years ago

SLR photo chip -> Cryptographically Signed Image -> Blockchain or Other Trust System Documents Production of Image and with key system thar matches image to record, all alterations to image are documented on said blockchain/other trust system. Verifiable system for chain of custody.

vasco• 2 years ago

Take the SLR camera, hook it up to a computer with a custom driver, every time you generate a new picture through AI, invoke the camera keying process programmatically. Most likely don't even need the camera when an exploit is found for the hardware.

SubiculumCode2• 2 years ago

TPM is that broken?

5424582• 2 years ago

I don’t think you even need that level of sophistication. You can probably get “good enough” results just pointing the camera at a high-res screen displaying the manipulated image and putting it slightly out of focus.

Swizec• 2 years ago

SLR photo chip -> Cryptographically Signed Image -> Blockchain or Other Trust System Documents Production of Image and with key system thar matches image to record, all alterations to image are documented on said blockchain/other trust system. Verifiable system for chain of custody.

You can have a fully verified factual photo that is still a lie.

Early pandemic had some great examples of this. Journalist wanted to show how crowded cities like NYC were despite distancing rules. So they took telephoto shots of people standing in line facing the camera. This squeezes the perspective and makes them look bunched up. Same photo taken with orthogonally to the line shows that people stand 6ft apart.

Here’s an article that explains this in more depth: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210126/p2a/00m/0op/00...

You don’t even have to cheat that obviously. A photo can lie just by showing, say, a bunch of soldiers holding guns next to scared children. Oh no look at those scary foreign soldiers terorizing the populace! What you don’t see is the humanitarian aid truck behind them and the workers distributing food to those children. Turns out the soldiers were there to protect the aid process, not to terrorize children.

This is not a technology problem.

iamacyborg5• 2 years ago

Early pandemic had some great examples of this.

The American civil war has some great examples too.

sneak• 2 years ago

Precisely zero photos you see in media are unedited/uncropped "straight out of the camera" (as we say). Professionals don't even shoot in formats that web browsers can display. I'm certainly not posting my 160MB raw files to the web.

What you propose is thoroughly a non-solution (to a non-problem).

Manuel_D• 2 years ago

The idea is that the raw photo files are cryptographically signed. Of course they're going to be edited, retouched, etc. But if a media outlet is challenged on the veracity of the photo - as in, claiming it's totally fabricated, not just touched up - then the signed raw file adds credibility.

mikewarot• 2 years ago

My one claim to fame gets this done years ago.[1]

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6757828B1/en

dizlexic2• 2 years ago

I love the idea of universal traceable media and data. I'm sure that will in no way be a bad thing.

falsandtru3• 2 years ago

The original title is "Deepfake Defense Tech Ready for Commercialization, Transition" but has been changed to "DARPA to launch efforts that will bolster defenses against manipulated media". The changed title is unnecessarily unsettling and misleading. I don't want to see the title changed to a clickbait title like a lowbrow gossip magazine would give it.

pvg2• 2 years ago

I don't want to see the title changed to a clickbait title like a lowbrow gossip magazine would give it.

The title is taken from the subheading which is might be unnecessary in this case but is usually fine. The poster hasn't made up some clickbait title.

falsandtru3• 2 years ago

It means that it is malicious to replace the title with what would have been the subheading because it looks like a clickbait title. Subheadings do not mean that anything can be changed into a title if it is a subheading. The fact is that this thread is now occupied by a discussion of bike yards that has nothing to do with technology.

tohnjitor• 2 years ago

Seems like a cover for publishing false evidence of crimes that will be used to justify military invasions.

dartos• 2 years ago

Is there a difference

webdoodle• 2 years ago

Yes. After Obama failed to renew the Smith-Mundt Act, now they can feed propaganda intended for a foreign audience, directly to your smartphone.

bhaney• 2 years ago

Why would they need to publicly announce a new program to continue doing that?

BirAdam2• 2 years ago

To get more public buy in and quiet dissent. The current climate is somewhat hostile to even supporting war much less directly engaging in it.

tempodox• 2 years ago

They didn‘t need any such cover for the Iraq war.

Yasuraka3• 2 years ago

They may not have needed it, but it happened nonetheless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

There are recent parallels, but this time by Biden who was fed false information. Though this time, the white house retracted that statement immediately instead of waiting for things to blow over[1].

I suppose the difference was that this time, the US government had nothing planned to capitalize on the lie.

[1] https://nypost.com/2023/10/11/biden-ive-seen-pictures-of-ter...

bilsbie• 2 years ago

As an adult can I opt out of this and decide for myself what media to consume?

dizlexic2• 2 years ago

Weirdly enough, according to the fine print of the internet no no you can't.

chrisan• 2 years ago

What is the opting in or mandatory part of this?

pksebben• 2 years ago

Take it you didn't read the article. The "Media" in "Media Manipulation", in this case, is like "a picture" or "a video", not "The Media" (as I also initially thought.)

This is a set of tech meant to ID deepfakes, not to restrict access or to disseminate messaging generally. It's not a bad thing to exist, if it can actually be done. I'd prefer to know if a picture is bunkum.

kelipso• 2 years ago

The end goal is "The Media" manipulation. Idea being you automate the identification of disinformation, automate alerting social media websites of disinformation. The website themselves will of course be incentivized to automatically remove disinformation based on the alerts.

Practically speaking, it will allow mass manipulation of public opinion for pretty much any topic by identifying opposing opinions as disinformation and automating the process nationwide or worldwide.

BirAdam2• 2 years ago

I would hope that this is made open source tho. I don’t really trust any government and/or megacorp contractor to tell me honestly whether or not something is fake/real.

echelon• 2 years ago

If people's needs aren't being met and they decide to follow one party or ideology, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

This is democracy. To forcefully change people's minds, regardless of what party or beliefs they have, is authoritarian.

This desire to bolster truth will be political. It comes from the same place as the idea that we should censor certain discourse or ban certain books.

declan_roberts2• 2 years ago

I can't wait for an official government arbiter (or better yet a "partner" not bound by the constitution or FOIA disclosure laws) deciding what is and what is not foreign manipulated media. Hopefully they get this going before the election before Americans start electing the wrong candidates.

Rest assured it's for our safety. Those pesky Russians are always trying to destroy us!

squigz5• 2 years ago

China also makes a good BBEG.

skhunted7• 2 years ago

Especially since it genuinely is. I’m not claiming the U.S. is better in an objective sense but clearly the two countries are in opposition to each other. China clearly would love a divided U.S.

djbusby• 2 years ago

BBEG: Big Bad Evil Guy/Gal

skhunted7• 2 years ago

Isn’t it obvious that Russia and China have been waging an information war against the U.S.? Isn’t it in the national and societal interests to prevent a foreign power from sowing dissent amongst the citizens of the country?

It’s been estimated that around 50% of the comments on the internet are bots. It’s cheap and easy to target people with messaging that influences their behavior. It’s worthwhile to try to prevent this.

bilbo0s• 2 years ago

It’s been estimated that around 50% of the comments on the internet are bots

That's just the sort of false misinformation being propagated through the internet and social media these days that makes it difficult for us as a society to properly assess and deal with our problems.

There is no way that only 50% of comments on the internet are sock puppets of one kind or another.

swayvil• 2 years ago

It isn't russia/china fuckery OR usa autofuckery. It's russia/china fuckery AND usa autofuckery.

And to further fuzz the culprits, the usa/china/russia people invest in each other's "countries".

mythrwy2• 2 years ago

Attempting to fix the cracks in society itself (including the corruption and shocking lack of honesty from many western government officials) is likely to be more fruitful then attempting to stop adversaries from pointing the cracks out.

If people feel represented and informed and wisely governed and have a stake in the system, adversarial information wars will be much less effective.

Pokerface777• 2 years ago

pretty sure he was being sarcastic. which he should be.

ajkjk2• 2 years ago

I... actually can't wait? You're not wrong that it can be overused but there is risk in both directions and pretending like there isn't just fully exposes you to one of them.

gopher_space2• 2 years ago

Yeah I've got to say I'm not sold on OP's whole "let's embrace chaos!" approach.

mc32• 2 years ago

It’s pretty amazing that $100k can decide an election much better than $1B is able to achieve.

The simple conclusion is traditional campaigns are money laundering and money wasting operations but you really want to win, just pay the Russians and Chinese a rounding error of an amount and they’ll change the outcome in your favor!

aaomidi2• 2 years ago

The arguments the US is using is literally the exact arguments Iran uses for why the censorship.

It's fascinating to see Americans cheer this on.

layer8• 2 years ago

The same argument can be valid in one context and invalid in another when the premises differ.

ReptileMan• 2 years ago

Damn, I always thought that this was Ministry of Truth's job ...

hx8• 2 years ago

AI Forensics Open Research Challenge Evaluation (AI FORCE)

You expect good acronyms on a .mil website, but in my mind this one is worthy of praise.

egberts1• 2 years ago

Does that include checking against the intelligence community for touting false information? Askin' for a friend.

MR4D• 2 years ago

Time for an anti-memetic division.

ajkdhcb2• 2 years ago

The Ministry of Truth.

DARPA to launch efforts that will bolster defenses against manipulated media

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