{"id":253713,"date":"2023-01-13T03:18:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T03:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=253713"},"modified":"2023-01-13T03:18:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-13T03:18:15","slug":"i-think-my-face-was-deepfaked-into-a-chinese-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/01\/13\/i-think-my-face-was-deepfaked-into-a-chinese-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"I think my face was deepfaked into a Chinese ad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amanda Florian writes about coming across an ad that seemed to have her face in it: “I woke up to a text from a friend in Shanghai, China. \u201cHey, Amanda\u2014is this you?\u201d he wrote via WeChat. I hadn\u2019t even had my morning coffee yet. I pulled my phone closer to get a better look. \u201cYes, it\u2019s me,\u201d I typed back. \u201cBut \u2026 how?\u201d While scrolling through Taobao, a Chinese marketplace owned by Alibaba, my friend came across an ad for a camping stove. It was like looking in a mirror<\/a>\u2014I saw my Puerto Rican mother\u2019s long eyelashes and distinct jawline, my father\u2019s prominent Austrian nose, and my abuela\u2019s long hands. \u201cIs it Photoshop?\u201d \u201cWas I hacked?\u201d \u201cOr perhaps one of my photo apps is to blame?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A DIY coder created a virtual AI ‘wife’ using the ChatGP program<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A coder created a virtual \u201cwife\u201d from ChatGPT and other recently-released machine learning systems that could see, respond, and react to him. The programmer, who goes by Bryce and claims to be an intern at a major tech firm, posted demonstrations of \u201cChatGPT-Chan\u201d to TikTok. In one video, he asks ChatGPT-chan to go to Burger King, and the bot responds with a generated image of her eating a burger<\/a> and says out loud, \u201cno way, it smells like old french fries and they never refill their Coke.\u201d The A.I. waifu is an amalgamation of all of these technologies\u2014a language generator, image generator, text-to-speech, and computer vision tools\u2014in ways he finds amusing, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to endure winter when you are serving a life sentence<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The air is crisp in Pennsylvania now. With the recent winter solstice ushering in the New Year, the cold season is in full swing. Prisoners in general population have swapped short sleeves and baseball caps for winter coats and wool hats, the same cocoa brown as the rest of our state-issued apparel. The trees have shed their leaves, and a gray haze hangs over the State Correctional Institution at Fayette, a 2,170-bed maximum security prison south of Pittsburgh, where I am serving a life sentence<\/a>. I am one of the fortunate ones. I have a view through a small window in my prison cell and can see the naked pines standing tall on a hill, beyond the razor-wire and chain-link fences. Nearby, smokestacks climb into the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venice\u2019s lagoon of 2,000 lost boats<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For decades, the Venetian lagoon \u2013 the largest wetland in the Mediterranean \u2013 has been used as a landfill by people wanting to get rid of their boats. An estimated 2,000 abandoned vessels are in the lagoon, scattered over an area of about 55,000 hectares (135,900 acres). Some lie beneath the surface, others poke above the water and some are stranded<\/a> on the barene \u2013 the lowlands that often disappear at high tide. The wrecks are a threat to other vessels \u2013 a boat\u2019s engine may be damaged if it passes over them. But they are an even bigger threat to the ecosystem, leaking chemicals, fuel and microplastics as the boats disintegrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mysterious founder of the town of Glasgow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As tourists wander Glasgow, they frequently pass an image of a gray-haired monk who, despite founding this Scottish city, remains shrouded in mystery. The most influential person in Glasgow history, he adorns its city crest, looms in its cathedral, graces street murals, and has his name on museums, schools, charities, and sports clubs. He is St. Mungo, the illegitimate son of an alleged witch thrown from a cliff<\/a> while he was in her womb. Baby Mungo somehow survived, the first of many miracles linked to Glasgow\u2019s patron saint. Dauvit Broun, a professor at the University of Glasgow, says even centuries of scholarly dissection haven\u2019t unravelled St. Mungo\u2019s mysteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Artist or artifice: Who is Adam Himebauch and what is he up to?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On a brisk day back in February, the artist Adam Himebauch posted a screenshot of a Go Fund Me to his Instagram account: a successful campaign that appeared to have raised $255,336 of a $50,000 goal for a documentary recapping an illustrious career and life<\/a> from the 1970s to the present. Seven months later, on social media, grainy stills and clips from the documentary announced his new installation at the New York City Museum of Contemporary Art\u2019s satellite location. The only hitch? There was no Go Fund Me; there is no N.Y.C. MOCA. Throughout the past year, Himebauch, 38, has been testing the boundaries of what even his inner circle thinks they know about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch a crow try to convince a hedgehog to cross the road<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/twitter.com\/Rainmaker1973\/status\/1612827637625548800\n<\/div><\/figure>\n
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here. Amanda Florian writes about coming across an ad that seemed to have her face in it: “I woke up to a text from a friend in Shanghai, China. \u201cHey, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I think my face was deepfaked into a Chinese ad”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}