Tencent Cloud Announces Deepfakes-As-a-Service For $145

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Tencent Cloud has announced it's offering a digital human production platform -- essentially Deepfakes-as-a-Service (DFaaS). According to Chinese media and confirmed to The Reg by Tencent, the service needs just three minutes of live-action video and 100 spoken sentences -- and a $145 fee -- to create a high-definition digital human. Gestating the creation requires just 24 hours. Making people hasn't been that quick since Eden.

The digital characters are available in half bodies or full bodies, and the service is available in both Chinese and English. Some aspects, like background and tone, are customizable. The videos avoid the flat intonation and single speech rhythm that plagues traditional acoustic models by using an in-house small-sample timbre customization technology that relies on deep learning acoustic models and neural network vocoders. [...] Tencent offers five styles for its digital humans: 3D realistic, 3D semi-realistic, 3D cartoon, 2D real person, and 2D cartoon. Customized Q&As can be created for the digital human, turning them into a type of deepfaked chatbot.

It Was Bound To Happen

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

And this is why we can't have nice things

Irony is why we can't have nice things

[Paul Fernhout]

https://pdfernhout.net/recogni... [pdfernhout.net]
"The big problem is that all these new war machines [and competitive businesses] and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military [and commercial] uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity [and other ills like using supernormal stimuli to direct attent

Re:Finally I can see my wife in a gangbang

[DonaId Trump]

Excuse me, excuse me, Meatball Ron. Just because you push a button doesn't mean you're hiding, okay? So why don't you stop with this hoax about the gangbang, your new hoax, you couldn't find 10 guys who'd be willing to bang your wife. She's not a 10, that's for sure, not for 1 guy and - let me tell you, the last time your wife saw 10 guys, it was two trips to Five Guys, believe me, maybe if she wasn't eating so much you might spend more time with her. Then why would she need 10 men, if she had one real man? I'm going to get her over here and put her on Don Jr.'s weight loss program, it's tremendous. No Five Guys with him, let me tell you, just lines, the five lines, every five minutes with him it's another five lines. Most people don't know this but losing weight, they call it "dieting," that's "dieting," it's not as hard as people make it out to be when you have that many lines, but a guy who looks like a meatball, and his wife, she loves the Five Guys, what do they know about a "diet," I'll tell you. My uncle, great genes, and he was good with the nuclear,

Re:

[drinkypoo]

My uncle, great genes, and he was good with the nuclear,

You forgot to call it the N word. 8/10.

Re:

[nicubunu]

Even more exciting: you can have yourself gangbanged by 10 men

Impact on the political process

[Beeftopia]

There was an NBC News report on Elizabeth Warren saying Republican voters had to be suppressed. There was a separate report on Ron DeSantis saying leadership was about fooling the voters [snopes.com]. Both are deepfakes. The political season is going to get interesting. When you have people who would invade Comet Ping Pong Pizza with an AR in search of a pedophile ring [npr.org] because they take Alex Jones seriously, imagine what this is going to do.

Re:

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Won't make a difference. The battle lines have been drawn. Just today, someone said to me, "last I checked, trans women are, indeed, women." I don't need any other evidence that this person and I live in different worlds. He and I cannot in any way reason together about solving problems in the society. The "normal" people on the left will never vote for a Republican and so will have to fold and adopt the worldview of the likes of that guy and everything that comes with it. That will push the other side furt

Re:

[drinkypoo]

America is headed for a failure.

America is headed for a failure because of the people who can't let go of sharply defined gender roles that are causing harm to everyone including them? Seems accurate.

The "normal" people on the left will never vote for a Republican

Certainly not while they're going balls out against human rights. Show me a sane person who would otherwise be a Republican and I'll show you an independent.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I get what you're saying, but I think this is the first step to talking about it and figuring it out. If these religious fundamentalists don't prevent us somehow, and that is probably the weakest possible term for the probable conclusion.

Re:

[iMadeGhostzilla]

"can't let go of sharply defined gender roles"

Philip K Dick said, "the most powerful tool for manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. Those who control the words control the reality of people who must use them."

THAT is what the left is doing: redefining words to control the reality. Human rights, as with every totalitarian attempts at power grab everywhere, are used as a a cover to achieve the goal. Non-discrimination against transgender people when it comes to them being able to make a living

Re:

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Ah, that well known charm of the left.

Re:

[gweihir]

I disagree. That moron with the AR has a real problem with perceiving reality. So do many others, but it is _not_ tied to the quality of the fake. These people believe the most abysmally stupid crap without any real evidence at all. Anybody else can do at least some fact-checking and they will do that for deepfakes as well. Hence the quality of the fakes will not make much of a difference.

Re:

[ghoul]

Just because dumb people fall for shoddy fakes doesnt mean smarter people wont fall for better fakes.

Re:

[gweihir]

I disagree. I believe it does not work like this at all, i.e. I do not believe that dumb people actually fall for fakes. I believe they fall for their own big ego in combination with no fact-checking ability at all. Also, smart people will keep fact-checking and all fakes get exposed sooner or later. So smart people learn and adapt. Dumb people just stay trapped in their parallel world construction.

Of course, one thing that dumb people like to push is that they are not dumb (because big ego). They are so fu

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Nope. It'll be like it is now with regular fake news: a constant deluge of manipulative bullshit that nobody has the time or energy to fact check. People will tend to get further entrenched into their own beliefs - their "personal truths" as it were - thereby further fragmenting society and exacerbating social divisions and making democracy less and less feasible. We're witnessing the US empire implode before our very eyes.

Re:

[gweihir]

Deep-fakes are not needed for that at all. All the damage is already being done without them. And hence deep-fakes do not matter.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yeah, but the knuckle-draggers who watch stuff like Fox News will be more easily convinced when they have pictures and video to go with the nice man on the telly's words. Never underestimate the needs of stupid people.

Re:

[nicubunu]

Those people who believe the earth is flat and vaccines do not work, they didn't invent those theories by themselves, they learned from someone else. And got their beliefs reinforced when they hear the same stuff from some personalities.

Re:

[gweihir]

Very weakly so. And they did never actually listen to the full story or get additional info. The claim here is about faked evidence. These people do not need evidence at all, they are quite content with getting low-quality _suggestions_. And hence deepfakes do not matter.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

These dumbasses got radicalized by the normalization of racism on television. Why don't you think they're susceptible to believing bullshit they saw on television? They've already conclusively proven that they are.

Re:

[gweihir]

I do think that all the damage in that area is already being done and that deep-fakes will not have any amplification effect. These morons already believe whatever appeals most to them and facts do not play a role. Hence faked facts will not either.

These people are really not some innocent naives being seduced by clever faked evidence. These are hardcore reality deniers and neither real nor fake evidence can reach them. An hence deep-fakes do not matter for them. Others will figure out what is going on and

Re:

[Beeftopia]

I disagree. I believe it does not work like this at all, i.e. I do not believe that dumb people actually fall for fakes. I believe they fall for their own big ego in combination with no fact-checking ability at all. Also, smart people will keep fact-checking and all fakes get exposed sooner or later. So smart people learn and adapt. Dumb people just stay trapped in their parallel world construction.

I saw a headline that fit my expectations. I discussed that issue with someone else. We delved into the headli

Re:

[TheGratefulNet]

I am truly scared for what this level of faking is going to do to the entire world.

trust used to mean something. we are on a track where there is zero trust on anything, in the future. how can you live in a world like that?

I really do fear, massively, for what this could do.

and I'm old enough to know what we'll still go head-first into this.

this is probably the biggest lesson in 'because you can, does not mean you should'.

maybe the next generation will grow up with this and learn to deal with all the mist

Can they offer also a 3D printed version ?!?

[LordHighExecutioner]

I need a few for my office, to fill meeting rooms...

Legetimate use exist

[real_nickname]

I can make a deep fake of me, plug it to chat gpt and skip all my team meetings! Deep fake of politician is no big deal, most of their decision are already indistinguable from a parody story from the onion anyway.

Could be useful?

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Just thinkin' out loud... Could it be used to graphically demonstrate what happens during a school shooting? I mean what it's actually like to be a child or staff in a school when some nut job with an AR15 or whatever comes into a classroom and starts shooting everyone. And I don't mean Hollywood special effects and exciting stunts that are designed to pass boards of censors and entertain crowds, I mean the real deal; what it actually looks like in all its true, grotesque, dull, pointless, bloody, depressin

Could be a positive thing

[misnohmer]

If people learn how easily and inexpensively anyone can make deep fakes, perhaps that will cause society to stop blindly trusting them. If we leave this capability available only to a few, that gives those few a huge advantage to manipulate the rest. Instilling some healthy skepticism of what they see on the internet into the general public is not a bad thing.