TNW
Fraudsters deepfake CEO's voice to trick manager into transferring $243,000
2 min · · Criminals use commercially available voice-generating AI software to impersonate the boss of a German company to steal funds. · Shared by 125, including Josh Olszewicz, Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, Matthias Lampe, Aamir Raz, Chris Messina, Ste Davies, Chris Skinner, Ser Jeff Garzik, zooko❤ⓩ🛡🦓🦓🦓, Peter Todd/mempoolfullrbf=1, Michael Gisiger, Bruno Skvorc 🦞 | bruno.eth, Brian Roemmele, Andy Beal, TNW Top Stories, Carl Morris, Courtney Bolton ★, Jose Luis Calvo, David Cohn, Josep M. Ganyet
t.co
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/08/29/hey-google-let-me-talk-my-departed-father/
· If all goes according to plan, future generations will be able to interact with departed relatives using mobile devices or virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, asking the deceased questions, eliciting stories and drawing upon a lifetime’s worth of advice long after their physical body is gone. · Shared by 6, including Chris Messina
cio.co.nz
Meet the first Kiwi digital human fashion model
2 min · · AI-powered model treads the digital runway at this year’s NZ Fashion Week · Shared by 6, including Chris Messina
The Washington Times
Army’s close-combat units to train against AI avatars; Microsoft system ready by 2021
1 min · · Army officials say an augmented reality training system created by Microsoft will be ready for prime time by 2021. · Shared by 11, including Tom Connor, Thomas Power, Chris Messina
jneurosci.org
Neural Mechanisms for Accepting and Rejecting Artificial Social Partners in the Uncanny Valley
· Artificial agents are becoming prevalent across human life domains. However, the neural mechanisms underlying human responses to these new, artificial social partners remain unclear. The uncanny valley (UV) hypothesis predicts that humans prefer anthropomorphic agents but reject them if they become too humanlike—the so-called UV reaction. Using fMRI, we investigated neural activity when subjects evaluated artificial agents and made decisions about them. Across two experimental tasks, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) encoded an explicit representation of subjects' UV reactions. Specifically, VMPFC signaled the subjective likability of artificial agents as a nonlinear function of humanlikeness, with selective low likability for highly humanlike agents. In exploratory across-subject analyses, these effects explained individual differences in psychophysical evaluations and preference choices. Functionally connected areas encoded critical inputs for these signals: the temporoparietal junction encoded a linear humanlikeness continuum, whereas nonlinear representations of humanlikeness in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and fusiform gyrus emphasized a human–nonhuman distinction. Following principles of multisensory integration, multiplicative combination of these signals reconstructed VMPFC's valuation function. During decision making, separate signals in VMPFC and DMPFC encoded subjects' decision variable for choices involving humans or artificial agents, respectively. A distinct amygdala signal predicted rejection of artificial agents. Our data suggest that human reactions toward artificial agents are governed by a neural mechanism that generates a selective, nonlinear valuation in response to a specific feature combination (humanlikeness in nonhuman agents). Thus, a basic principle known from sensory coding—neural feature selectivity from linear–nonlinear transformation—may also underlie human responses to artificial social partners.
SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Would you trust a robot to make decisions for you? Autonomous artificial agents are increasingly entering our lives, but how the human brain responds to these new artificial social partners remains unclear. The uncanny valley (UV) hypothesis—an influential psychological framework—captures the observation that human responses to artificial agents are nonlinear: we like increasingly anthropomorphic artificial agents, but feel uncomfortable if they become too humanlike. Here we investigated neural activity when humans evaluated artificial agents and made personal decisions about them. Our findings suggest a novel neurobiological conceptualization of human responses toward artificial agents: the UV reaction—a selective dislike of highly humanlike agents—is based on nonlinear value-coding in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a key component of the brain's reward system. · Shared by 5, including Chris Messina
virtual-beings-summit.com
Virtual Beings Summit
5 min · · What is a virtual being ?A virtual being is a character that you know isn’t real but with whom you can build a Two-way emotional relationship.-What are examples of virtual beings?Virtual beings range… · Shared by 14, including Rick King, Alexia Bonatsos, Chris Messina, Kent Bye (Voices of VR)
Entrepreneur
Your Next Operating System Will Look Like You, Make You Laugh and Remember That You Hate Cilantro
4 min · · VR and AR are poised to bring the world the next great OS. · Shared by 16, including Alexia Bonatsos, Chris Messina
National Post
Jordan Peterson: The Deep Fake artists must be stopped before we no longer know what’s real
5 min · · I can tell you from personal experience how disturbing it is to discover a website devoted to making fake audio clips of you — for comic or malevolent purposes · Shared by 13, including Brian Roemmele, Chris Messina
SXSW
Synthetic Reality: Does the Real ‘You’ Matter?
· Our social media feeds are increasingly filled with synthetic abstractions of our true selves. We tune, age and manipulate our faces. We use emojis and avatars to mask or experiment with our identity.… · Shared by 6, including Chris Messina
hipcityreg.substack.com
Y2k-20 Will Come In 3rd Place
4 min · · Raged and been a fool, when I shoulda loved and repented… - Jack Keroauc Life is balance. As we pushed into digital documentation on Instagram, we edited our photos to look grainy and nostalgic. A… · Shared by 5, including Chris Messina
youtube.com
Real-Time Voice Cloning Toolbox
· Project here: https://github.com/CorentinJ/Real-Time-Voice-Cloning Original paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.04558 · Shared by 9, including Gengo 🦁, Kirk Borne, Chris Messina
tech.fb.com
Creativity for all: Facebook’s Spark AR now lets anyone build and share effects on Instagram
3 min · · Starting today, anyone can create and publish their own Spark AR effects on Instagram. We’re also introducing the new Effect Gallery, which i · Shared by 31, including Chris Messina, Daniel Jörg, Resh Sidhu, Matt Navarra, CGTrader
youtube.com
Bill Hader channels Tom Cruise [DeepFake]
· Paperspace is the computing cloud platform built for the future to power a wide range of next-generation applications. Learn more on: https://www.paperspace.... · Shared by 23, including MrChad 🔮, Mathew Ingram, Yann “不停” Heurtaux ⏚ @shalf@mastodon.social, Chris Messina
hubpages.com
The Next Five Years of Synthetic Media: A Slice of Tomorrow's Society in 2024
14+ min · · The creation of GANs in 2014 supercharged media synthesis, and so far the first five years have been an era of amazing (and sometimes creepy) developments. The next five years are shaping up to be the… · Shared by 6, including Chris Messina
CNN
The Democratic Party deepfaked its own chairman to highlight 2020 concerns
2 min · · The Democratic National Committee wanted to demonstrate the potential threat to the 2020 election posed by deepfake videos — clips created with artificial intelligence that can make people appear to… · Shared by 14, including Mathew Ingram, Chris Messina
Futurism
This genius used deepfakes to "fix" the new "The Lion King"
1 min · · Now Simba doesn't just look like any other cat. · Shared by 12, including Chris Messina