the Deepfake

Russell Brandom: “When you falsify media, you’re crossing this line into something that is verifiably untrue. Whereas, a lot of these [influence] campaigns aren’t about making claims that are true or false, because then you can be proven wrong.”In this episode of the Deepfake, we talk to journalist Russell Brandom about deepfakes and online influence campaigns, truth in media, what synthetic media’s product cycle looks like, and whether AI can “understand” as framed by analytic philosophy.About Russell:Russell Brandom is a policy editor for The Verge. He has written extensively about the internet, law, culture and media, and in 2019 wrote a widely circulated article titled “Deepfake Propaganda is Not a Real Problem” (The Verge) that critically reframed the question of deepfakes with respect to political influence campaigns and election interference. He is also the author of the underrated tweet “Who decided to call it ‘deepfake regulation’ instead of ‘GAN control’”You can find us on Twitter @AudioDeepfakeCheck out our website for more episodes and content:www.deepfakepodcast.ml

Paul Warren: "The 'aha,' the awe moments were more around the generative models. And for me that was seeing energy based systems and relationships to statistical dynamics... You see it in this one field. My goodness, this formula is also used in this other context. This formula is the same as that formula is the same as this formula. It's all one thing! There is structure in the universe!"Data scientist Paul Warren joins us this episode on the Deepfake to share his many epiphanies on whether AI can be Turing Complete, how algorithmic feedback can change our relationship to art, what makes information meaningful, and when he's experienced the sublime with artificial intelligence and exponential growth.About Paul:We are excited for the chance to speak with Stanford-trained data scientist and machine learning consultant Paul Warren, whose work spans more than 40 AI projects with YCombinator startups, NASA, the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture, and many other firms. His knowledge and understanding include the technical aspects of AI and quantum computing, as well as aesthetics and social theory that inform human relationships with the information systems in which we live.Thanks for tuning in!You can find us on Twitter @AudioDeepfake, and you can listen to more episodes on our website: www.deepfakepodcast.ml

Siwei Lyu:  “These days, on the internet, it’s very hard to find any photograph that is original without any manipulation…”   In this episode of the Deepfake, we chat with Professor Siwei Lyu about media forensics, how AI makes detecting media forgeries more effective, and how to make sense of and address deepfakes on social media.About Siwei:  We are honored for the chance to speak with Professor Siwei Lyu, an award-winning computer scientist at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, whose research covers digital media forensics, computer vision, and machine learning. He is also the director of UBuffalo’s Media Forensic Lab, he has testified before Congress, and his research on media forensics and deepfake detection has been featured on PBS, Wired Magazine, Nature, DEFCON, and many many other publications.You can find us on Twitter @AudioDeepfake

Stephanie Lepp is an artist and producer whose work strives to hold up a mirror — inviting us to grow from what we see. She's the producer of Reckonings, a podcast that tells the stories of people who've shifted their political worldview, transcended extremism, and made other kinds of transformative change. Her latest work is Deep Reckonings, a series of explicitly-marked deepfakes that imagine Mark Zuckerberg, Brett Kavanaugh, and other public figures having a reckoning -- and which we'll be discussing in this episode. You can find her on Twitter: @stephlepp