There are some cool uses like dubbing movies in foreign languages while keeping the original "voice styles" or having your long dead relatives talking to you in some memorabilia etc. It could also cause unexpected creativity explosion e.g. in games or fan fiction movies. To avoid misuses we might perhaps find the only good use of blockchain.

>long dead relatives talking to you in some memorabilia etc.

It seems a bit weird to me though. I mean, looking back at old records can still pass as mere nostalgic behavior. Wanting new sentences pronounced in disguise of lost relative voices is not great in term of respect for these people to share my own feelings.

Also I guess that now there is not much preventing completely new songs with whatever lyrics staring voices of Elvis, Hendrix and Pavarotti. Actually a continuous flow of on the fly generated lyrics seems perfectly plausible at this level, isn't it?

It is weird, and as usual there is a Black Mirror episode with this exact premise. The unforeseen consequences in the episode even seem pretty realistic based on current GPT behavior.

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

My grandpa wrote a fiction book so having him read it to me would be kinda cool, even if he's long gone. Still, he technically exists in the 4D universe but the time dimension no longer overlaps with mine.

Foreign language dubbing is a great use case. And the ability to alter the video such the the lips are synced to the dubbed version would be a great addition. I can’t believe studios are using these things already (the video part in particular).

I think we're not that far from the day all movies will be produced by AI, including all parts in various languages using the most popular actors per given market, all accurately translated and of course perfectly synced since there would be no dubbing but creation on the fly. First they'll use virtual copies of real actors by purchasing rights from their estate, until the public will slowly accept full virtual and cheaper ones. I give them 20 years max, and I'm being optimistic (pessimistic?).

About the blockchain comment… For years, I’ve been expecting camera makers (including phone makers) to offer image hash verification on blockchain at the moment of image capture. I’m surprised it’s not routine.

1. Expensive

2. Requires internet

3. What image do you verify? Between auto-retouching, manual retouching, compression, filetype conversion, an image file might be invisibly transformed 10 times in between capture and Instagram upload.

4. Useless for disproving fake images until every camera manufacturer in the world has implemented this.

5. Hostile to customers, now your picture doesn't get the green verified badge or whatever if you decide to crop it or something.

Ad 3) all of them. They will be recorded in a cryptographically recorded chain and you'll be able to backtrack all steps.

I'm now wondering how many images are generated a second that would all need to be recorded. How much is it going to cost to take a photo?

I don't think that works because there isn't One True Blockchain and it doesn't seem like there ever will be. How do you get Google, Huawei, some random photo editing app, Dropbox, Meta, etc. to all agree on the same chain?

This is a general problem that I have with a lot of blockchain ideas. For example, there are a few startups that claim to verify carbon offsets by registering them on the blockchain. There are many problems with this that we don't need to get into, but the relevant one here is: what is stopping me from registering the same offset on three different chains?

I guess a mix between impractical and completely useless?

The only thing that blockchain can do that couldn't be done before is cryptocurrencies (not sharing my opinion about them here).

Pretty sure this is not a good use of blockchain, and I don't see how it would remotely avoid misuses.

> I guess eventually people will go back to only meeting face to face for important communications

This seems to be the only realistic future. This sort of technology literally makes it impossible to trust anything electronic.

People were worried about the balkanization of the internet, but now they look like optimists.

PGP exists, it is just no one uses it

PGP doesn't help you with phone and video calls.

not really the point. a PGP-style tech could easily exist for phone or video tomorrow, if it doesn't already. but PGP-style tech for email (called "PGP") has existed for 32 years and basically no one uses it. whether or not the tech exists doesn't matter nearly as much as whether or not people actually use it.

I'm unclear as to what your point is, then...

you said: "This sort of technology literally makes it impossible to trust anything electronic."

we said: "No, because there is also technology that makes it possible to trust anything electronic with very nearly 100% reliability. But no one uses it"

I think your first statement is both technically wrong and generally wrong. Electronic trust is a solved problem...it's just that right now, it's really not as big a deal as some people are worried about it being, so we haven't generally implemented the solution. We could make electronic cars for long time before other things made them commercially viable.

You can short circuit all that shit by merely compromising the device.

trusted execution is also a thing, just largely unused/underutilized. in my opinion hardware/software platforms can be designed such that the only real exploit would be for someone to insert an attack vector into the hardware (IC) itself, which is nation-state level work. again, possible but not used in practice because of the perceived risk-reward tradeoff at the moment.

Yea until the next Vault7 leaks and the "state level work" is accessible to all.

Ahh, I see.

I disagree that electronic trust is a solved problem. It is mathematically solved, yes, but the reason that it isn't widely used is because it's still intrusive and painful to do. A solution that isn't acceptable to the masses isn't an effective solution.

If it could be done in a way that is invisible (like HTTPS, for instance), then it would be ubiquitous. That's the part of the problem space that still needs resolution.

It's called signing.

I send you a bunch of bytes signed with my private key (which somehow you have to verify in a trusted way) and you can be sure that I am the person who signed those bytes (unless I was compromised).

Thanks, off to work on a new startup!

It doesn't have to be PGP specifically to satisfy the goal of strong keypair-based security finally having traction — does it?

USB etc hardware keys can be used protect accounts like Gmail, Coinbase, web hosting services, many more now.

Fun fact: it's possible to receive Facebook user notification emails encrypted against your public PGP key.

As this is what every "organized crime" (people who dont want prying eyes) groups have done for centuries.

Next, normal people will adopt the Mafia's 'cover the mouth while pretending to use a tooth-pick whilst talking to prevent lip reading from remote viewers (same thing sports people do currently.

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My granmother was deaf for the latter half of her life. She became an expert lip reader.

It was fun going to restaurants with her as she would tell me what people at the tables far away were talking about "oh that couple isnt having a happy time..."

There's a book I've been waiting years for the audiobook to come out. Plenty of legitimate uses for this tech. Plenty of horrible ones too. It's the same with many technologies, no? I don't think outright banning it makes any sense.

Maybe there are legitimate uses, but that isn't one. There is no need for an audiobook narrator to sound like a real person, an AI narrator should be a realistic-sounding but completely fabricated voice.

Example: https://blog.elevenlabs.io/enter-the-new-year-with-a-bang/

People still accept contracts based (in part) on scribbles on paper. Fraud will happen, just like it does for signatures. I'm sure sometimes countermeasures will be done (including meeting in person), but it's not like video chat or phone calls will completely disappear.

> face to face for important communications

Funny how computing perfected communication and ultimately will undermine itself.

> I don't know what the way forward is for news.

I'd say every packet of voice/img will have to be signed by the recording device and checked at rendering time.

> I truly do not understand people like these founders

Me neither. Don't do it. We don't need that, and the malevolent use of this will confuse people to an extreme point.

Even the 'good' use of having a deceased relative utter new sentences is beyond strange. This is too far gone. And I'm no luddite.

This is democratising the tech. Otherwise only the intelligence agencies will have it and we will continue to be duped not knowing what is possible.

We don't need to all be able to use the tech for it to be known publicly.

Apply your same logic to any other easily misused tech:

"We must all have easy access to bio-engineered viruses. Otherwise only..."

"We all need to have access to nuclear weapons. Otherwise only..."

Not all tech should be in everyone's hands.

Its a different kind of tech. A society changing tech that can be used surreptitiously. It needs to be in people faces in (for example) the form of over the top and ridiculous memes.

That is not possible with or comparable to, things such as bioweapons.

That is a fair point. It is different in that it could be used without necessarily creating destructive ends. Ultimately though, once the majority of people are aware of the capabilities of the technology, is any good being done by still allowing it to be easily accessible? It seems that the value in spreading its use reduces proportionally to the population of people who are still ignorant of it, while the danger of its misuse rises with number of actors/users until fully effective, equally accessible countermeasures are in place. If that's accurate, then it seems that the plan you're advocating for increases danger as quickly as possible and keeps it high while the world works on mitigations.

The plan I'm advocating for immunise the public against the danger of misinformation through deepfakes, as well as cause a lot of resource to be thrown at the problem as the public would surely be very uncomfortable in such a situation

I stopped trusting the news years ago, between whoring out for engaging but divisive content and obvious political bias, it's been a crapshoot since GWBs cronies gutted the FCC.