69 FUTURESHOCK InVID
Broadcasters AFP and Deutsche Welle provide feedback and direction on the journalistic applications for the research. “Our role in this at Deutsche Welle is fairly small in terms of the development itself,” says Spangenberg. “What we have done is formulate the requirements from a media and news organisation perspective. When a new version of the tools comes out, we give it to journalists and ask them to test it, play around with it and give feedback. In total, we will have had nine of these cycles of development, validation, and redevelopment.” DANGEROUS FAKES The toolkit has long since left the lab and is being practically employed around the news and verification sectors – and none too soon, some would argue, as the digital information that we’re continually exposed to becomes increasingly unreliable. “It’s an arms race, in a way,” says Spangenberg. “One of the prime examples is the Obama video of a completely faked speech, voiced by the actor Jordan Peele. The first time I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s weird language Obama’s using’ and then, toward the end, you see Jordan Peele on the other half of the screen. But if you don’t know what’s possible, then I think people can very easily be fooled. “They did some work on this deep fakes technology at the Max Planck Institutes with mapping of faces, and that was in 2016, almost three years ago. I think it’s only going to become more sophisticated when it comes to media manipulation. Some people could just be doing it for research, but others are doing things with bodies and faces merged with other content to make people appear to do things that they’ve never done. That can go viral very quickly, and can be very
FAKE OR FACT? The InVID dashboard offers a video analysis tool that returns the metadata attached. It also offers a forensic analysis tool which can detect manipulation or fabrication of material such as double JPEG quantisation and JPEG ghosts
dangerous in terms of reputation and many other things.” So how do we make good decisions in a world where you can no longer believe your eyes? Spangenberg thinks the most important first step is media literacy, including developing critical thinking for children in early education. “We also need to teach them how to use technology – not using their smartphones, because that’s all kids do – but what’s underlying the technology, how it works, what it can lead to and what people use it for – for good, for bad, for ugly. “We should also train them to use tools for verification. I’m sometimes stunned by how few people know how to use basic internet techniques like a reverse image search, where you can easily use Google to see if and where a similar image is
available elsewhere on the internet. A lot of people don’t know how to do this so, instead, they just share images that look real and suit their world view. “Only about half of journalists are really experts when it comes to knowing your tools for verifying digital content. It’s definitely not mainstream yet. People have to learn it. We’re not at that point where every journalist, no matter what age, knows exactly what they have to do to verify any item you give them.” The term “mainstream media” has become a blanket slur against a whole industry which some feel has lost touch with the facts of people’s lives. As local news sources dry up and news media is centralised in national urban centres, people start to find news sources that speak to them more personally and directly – and not all of these may have their best interests at heart. Spangenberg believes that a proven dedication to the truth may be one remedy. “This is all about trying to find out who, what, where, when, why. We’re having this trust crisis. These are difficult times for established media. Some are turning away, some are turning against it, but there are some in the middle still and you have to try to win some of them back. How do you do it? You have to show that you’re doing your best and you’re trying to get to the bottom of things, to get to the truth of the matter.” n For more information visit the InVID project website: https://www.invid-project.eu
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