Newsletter Archives
-
Is the woman in this video real or a deepfake? Now find out.
PUBLIC DEFENDER
By Brian Livingston
There’s been an explosion in artificial intelligence (AI) that can create fake videos and compose passable writing samples. These computer-generated outputs are now good enough to fool the average person, who may absorb social media with an uncritical eye.
The major media have exhaustively (but superficially) written about these AI programs. So I won’t bore you with the mind-numbing details of exactly how they work.
Instead, I’ll tell you how to detect them and — hopefully — protect yourself against fakes of all kinds.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.04.0, 2023-01-23).
-
Saving history
PERSONAL MEDIA
By Will Fastie
Nothing lasts forever. Or does it?
The readership of this newsletter is old enough to have used, if not embraced, a host of analog technologies for documenting memories. Today we’re taking photos and videos using our omnipresent “phones,” but as recently as two decades ago magnetic tape and film were our primary tools.
We know this to be true because in our attics, basements, and closets we have trays of 35mm and Instamatic (127) slides. We have strips of black-and-white negatives, and perhaps strips of color negatives. We have boxes of video tapes in Sony Video8, Hi8, Betamax, VHS, VHS-C, and the crossover format MiniDV. We have albums of printed photos. We have quarter-inch audio tapes, cassette tapes, and maybe even the elusive 8-track cartridge format. We may even have vinyl LPs, and older 45s and 78s.
Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.03.0, 2023-01-16).