Scientists used 'fake news' to stop predators from killing endangered birds—and the result was remarkable
Mar 2021, phys.org
There's visual fakes and auditory imposters, but rarely do we get to hear about artificial olfactory camouflage:
Odors emanating from the shorebirds' feathers and eggs attract these scent-hunting mammals, which easily find the nests.Five weeks before the shorebirds arrived for their breeding season in 2016, we mixed the odors with Vaseline and smeared the concoction on hundreds of rocks over two 1,000-hectare study sites. We did this every three days, for three months.The predators were initially attracted to the odors. But within days, after realizing the scent would not lead to food, they lost interest and stopped visiting the site.via: Grant L. Norbury et al. Misinformation tactics protect rare birds from problem predators, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe4164
Image credit: Hard to believe, but this is a picture of Jezero Crater on Mars, taken by the robot named Perseverance, 2021.
How to spot deepfakes? Look at light reflection in the eyes
Mar 2021, phys.org
From the researchers who brought you the blinkrate solution to deepfake video (the fakes give it away because they blink funny).
This one is similar, and it's because both eyes are supposed to have the same image being reflected. And it happens that way every time, no matter what, because our eyeballs are always symmetrical, something about bilateria or binocular vision.
Whereas deepfake generators are good at picking out the idiosyncrasies, the imperfections, it's the perfect part that are their weakness. And I guess this is one of the few things we have that are perfect. Another one? Blowing spit bubbles out of your mouth, it's the only geometrically perfect thing the human body can create.
The "Deepfake-o-meter," by the way.
via University at Buffalo: Exposing GAN-generated Faces Using Inconsistent Corneal Specular Highlights. arXiv:2009.11924v2 [cs.CV] arxiv.org/abs/2009.11924
Lawyers used sheepskin as anti-fraud device for hundreds of years to stop fraudsters pulling the wool
Mar 2021, phys.org
Just like modern quantum cryptography:
Legal documents dating from the 13th to 20th century, and have discovered they were almost always written on sheepskin, rather than goatskin or calfskin vellum. This may have been because the structure of sheepskin made attempts to remove or modify text obvious. Attempts to scrape off the ink would result in these layers detaching—known as delamination—leaving a visible blemish highlighting any attempts to change any writing.via University of Exeter: Scratching the surface: the use of sheepskin parchment to deter textual erasure in early modern legal deeds, Doherty et al. Heritage Science 2021, DOI: 10.1186/s40494-021-00503-6
MyHeritage offers 'creepy' deepfake tool to reanimate dead
Mar 2021, BBC News
Dead people brought back to life, just like you've always wanted.
A growing problem of 'deepfake geography' - How AI falsifies satellite images
Apr 2021, phys.org
Let's say you wanted to make it look like the rainforest wasn't on fire -- you can take out the smoke plumes. Or maybe you want to create a story about a fake explosion somewhere, you put in some smoke plumes. Advanced technology can help you make really believable forgeries.
The study's goal was not to show that geospatial data can be falsified, Zhao said. Rather, the authors hope to learn how to detect fake images so that geographers can begin to develop the data literacy tools, similar to today's fact-checking services, for public benefit.via University of Washington: Cartography and Geographic Information Science, DOI: 10.1080/15230406.2021.1910075
Post Script:
Don't forget that fake maps have been a thing forever. The mapmakers themselves would put fake towns or streets in their maps to stop people from making copies. Even dictionary-makers employ this security measure with fake words. It's called a copyright trap, and if you copied the trap and didn't know it, the real mapmaker could identify your copy as their original.
And Paper Street was where Tyler Durden lived in Fight Club, but we don't talk about that.
Post Post Script:
Recognizing liars from the sound of their voice
Feb 2021, phys.org
AI can tell us all the things we already know but couldn't prove with science until now (Maybe like fractals?). We know when people are lying. Lying is a two way street; it requires a kind of social permission that we give to each other for some reason.
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