PetaPixel: Chrome Extension Can Detect Fake Profile Pictures with 99.29% Accuracy. “V7 Labs has created a new artificial intelligence-based (AI) software that works as a Google Chrome extension that is capable of detecting artificially generated profile pictures — like the ones above — with a claimed 99.28% accuracy.” Note this is for detecting GAN-generated images, not deepfakes.
University at Buffalo: Data mining the past: New algorithm searches historic documents to discover noteworthy people. “Old newspapers provide a window into our past, and a new algorithm co-developed by a University at Buffalo School of Management researcher is helping turn those historic documents into useful, searchable data. Published in Decision Support Systems, the algorithm can find and rank people’s names in order of importance from the results produced by optical character recognition (OCR), the computerized method of converting scanned documents into text that is often messy.”
BGR: This new app lets you create photorealistic fake people – and it’s mind-blowing. “Epic Games earlier today announced a new browser-based tool that lets users create photorealistic characters and, not surprisingly, the end result is quite impressive. Dubbed the MetaHuman Creator, the new tool is designed to make what would otherwise be a potentially costly and resource-intensive task accessible, quick, and straight-forward.” There’s a video embedded in the article that is absolutely wild.
New York Times: Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You?. “There are now businesses that sell fake people. On the website Generated.Photos, you can buy a ‘unique, worry-free’ fake person for $2.99, or 1,000 people for $1,000. If you just need a couple of fake people — for characters in a video game, or to make your company website appear more diverse — you can get their photos for free on ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com. Adjust their likeness as needed; make them old or young or the ethnicity of your choosing. If you want your fake person animated, a company called Rosebud.AI can do that and can even make them talk.”
New York Times: New York Lost These 5 Remarkable Characters to the Virus. “To live in New York is to know the city as a patchwork of tight-knit neighborhoods defined by local characters: the beloved bartender, the ‘mayor’ of the block, the habitual stoop-sitter, the chatty sidewalk vendor. And while the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 18,000 city residents, has claimed the lives of prominent figures, the wider toll has been on these lesser-known but no less distinctive citizens.”
Bellingcat: Using Phone Contact Book Apps For Digital Research. “Popular apps such as TrueCaller or GetContact advertise the ability to see who is really calling you, even if you do not know the number, and alert the app user of spam or scam calls. However, the way that these apps gather information to determine the name of an unknown caller is not as broadly advertised.”
Mancunion: A Database of Beautiful People . “A Database of Beautiful People is a blossoming YouTube series created in 2018 of personal and intimate interviews with people from around the globe. Its main purpose is to reflect genuineness through each individual’s personality and stories. It is simply an observation of ordinary people that makes us question the meaning of ordinary.” Very limited at the moment, but a fantastic idea.
Phys .org: Crowdsourced family tree yields new insights about humanity. “Thanksgiving gatherings could get bigger —a lot bigger—as science uncovers the familial bonds that bind us. From millions of interconnected online genealogy profiles, researchers have amassed the largest, scientifically-vetted family tree to date, which at 13 million people, is slightly bigger than a nation the size of Cuba or Belgium. Published in the journal Science, the new dataset offers fresh insights into the last 500 years of marriage and migration in Europe and North America, and the role of genes in longevity.”
CrunchyTricks: 5 Ways to Find Someone on Facebook Without Logging In. “So, basically there are maximum chances that we can find anyone we want to via Facebook. But, is it necessary to login to our account if we want to find someone on Facebook? No, that’s not important. You can find people on Facebook without even logging in. You didn’t know that, right? It’s perfectly fine, I am here to tell you how can this be done.” The English in this article is a little awkward, but nothing that makes comprehension difficult.
ProPublica: How to background your Tinder dates. Of course, backgrounding your Tinder dates may be useful. I’m linking to it here because it looks at how to take scraps of information and get more scraps, and perhaps hopefully make a full picture.
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