Biometric Update reports that Amazon’s Ring products are offering a feature called “Familiar Faces.”
“In September, Amazon revealed a revamped Ring camera lineup featuring two notable AI features, Familiar Faces and Search Party. Familiar Faces uses facial recognition and lets users tag neighbors or friends so future alerts identify them by name rather than generic motion.”
A recent PYMNTS article entitled “AI Voices Are Now Indistinguishable From Humans, Experts Say” includes the following about voice deepfakes:
“A new PLoS One study found that artificial intelligence has reached a point where cloned voices are indistinguishable from genuine ones. In the experiment, participants were asked to tellhuman voices from AI-generated ones across 80 samples. Cloned voices were mistaken for real in 58% of cases, while human voices were correctly identified only 62% of the time.”
What the study didn’t measure
Since you already read the title of this post, you know that I’m concentrating on the word “participants.”
The PLoS One experiment used PEOPLE to try to distinguish real voices from deepfake ones.
And people aren’t all that accurate. Never have been.
Before you decide that people can’t detect fake voices…
…why not have an ALGORITHM give it a try?
What the study did measure
But to be fair, that wasn’t the goal of the PLoS One study, which specifically focused on human perception.
“Recently, an intriguing effect was reported in AI-generated faces, where such face images were perceived as more human than images of real humans – a “hyperrealism effect.” Here, we tested whether a “hyperrealism effect” also exists for AI-generated voices.”
For the record, the researchers did NOT discover a hyperrealism effect in AI-generated voices.
Do you offer a solution?
But if future deepfake voices sound realer than real, then we will REALLY need the algorithms to spot the fakes.
And if your company has a voice deepfake detection solution, I could have talked about it right now in this post.
“At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November….
“The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.”
The La Verne Amazon Fresh store only opened in April 2022, and therefore only had a life of 3 1/2 years.
“My current recommendation is strongly against uploading your biometrics to OpenAl’s new social feed app, Sora (currently in early release).
“Sora’s Cameo option has the user upload their own biometrics to create voice/video Deepfakes of themselves. The user can also set their preferences to allow others to create Deepfakes of each other, too.
“This is a privacy and security nightmare.”
Deepfake.
As I read this, one thing hit me: the intentional use of the word “deepfake,” with its negative connotations.
I had the sneaking suspicion that the descriptions of Cameo didn’t use the word “deepfake” to describe the feature.
“Cameos are reusable “characters” built from a short video-and-audio capture of you. They let you appear in Sora videos, made by you or by specific people you approve, using a realistic version of your likeness and voice. When you create a cameo, you choose who can use it (e.g., only you, people you approve, or broader access).”
Likeness.
The entire episode shows the power of words. If you substitute a positive word such as “likeness” for a negative word such as “deepfake”—or vice versa—you exercise the power of to color the entire conversation.
Another example from many years ago was an ad from the sugar lobby which intentionally denigrated the “artificial” competitors to all natural sugar. Very effective for the time, in which the old promise of better living through chemicals was regarded as horror.
Repurposing can be found all over the place. Let’s look at the history of the Cure song “A Forest.”
Somehow I escaped hearing “A Forest” until decades after it was released, when the song was used on the old Fox Soccer Channel. This song was originally released in 1980, very early in the Cure’s career, and was a goth-yet-driving track that fit in with the times. And Robert Smith had not yet become Edward Scissorhands.
“A Forest” official video.
But then another Robert, Robert Palmer, would inject himself into the story.
Palmer had not yet become The Mannequin Guy (that would come four years later), but he was still pretty big. Big enough to rank higher than the Cure in the lineup for the Rock Werchter Festival on July 5, 1981. And when you’re a supporting act like the Cure was on that day, things don’t always go your way.
“The day before in Torhout the band had been able to play 15 songs, in Werchter they would only play 13 songs skipping “Three Imaginary Boys” and “Faith”. The Cure, consisting of Robert Smith, Simon Gallup and Laurence Tolhurst, was scheduled to play just before Robert Palmer and while they were playing, they were told to cut their set short by Robert Palmer’s managers.”
So the Cure was only allowed to play one more song. Robert Smith announced to the crowd:
“This is the final song because we’re not allowed to carry on anymore, cause everybody want’s to see Robert Palmer I think. It’s called ‘A Forest.'”
Cue malicious compliance.
The band starts playing the slow introduction to the song…with a few extra flourishes that stretched the intro out a bit.
After a minute-long introduction, the song finally picks up at the normal tempo. Well, with a little more of an instrumental introduction before Smith starts singing.
He sings the verses of the song, through the final words “again and again and again and again and again.” And five minutes in, it appears that the Cure has “a bad case of loving” the song, because they keep on playing.
And playing.
And playing.
With less of a drum beat and bass line as Smith explores every chord, and every note, on his guitar.
Six and a half minutes in, as you start to see backstage activity, Smith begins to sing new lyrics, “parting is such sweet sorrow” among them.
But the Cure didn’t part. They kept on playing. And at seven and a half minutes in, they picked up the pace again.
By the 8 minute mark, Smith is channeling his inner Hendrix/Townshend as the band finally concludes the song, “encouraged” by Robert Palmer’s roadies.
You can see the performance for yourself. Language warning at the end.
The Cure playing “A Forest” in 1981. The infamous “F Robert Palmer” performance.
This sudden, provoked improvisation permanently affected future live performances of “A Forest.” Here’s a 1992 example, in which the song stretched for over 13 minutes. Minute-long slow intro, four-minute song proper, and a coda as long as the entire Werchter performance.
The Cure playing “A Forest” in 1992, “addicted” to the new longer arrangement.
So feel free to repurpose YOUR content, longer or shorter as you wish. The original piece may resonate with some, while the newer pieces may resonate with others.
If the Fox Soccer Channel had played “A Forest” more often, maybe it would still be around today.
Bredemarket 