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LeMonde_en OP t1_j72idbc wrote

Reply to comment by SowetoNecklace in I'm the head of video at France’s leading newspaper Le Monde. Our team recreated Charles De Gaulle's lost 1940 recording for France to resist the Nazis using historical sources and artificial intelligence. AMA about our investigation. by LeMonde_en

Hi!
Thanks for your question.
We worked with researchers in ethics from the very beginning of the project to build the project framework. One of them is Nadia Guerouaou, who specializes in neuroethics and is one of the very few researchers worldwide working on how audio deepfakes can be useful medically (to recreate the voice of someone suffering from throat cancer for example). She advised us to be very transparent about what is based on historical documents (the text of the speech, for example) and what is an artistic or technological interpretation: the actor reading the text, and the supercomputer encoding the final voice. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the enthusiasm of the researchers in ethics I contacted. Making dead people talk through deep learning is not a moral question in itself, they told me. Everything depends on why you want to do this: to help others learn, or to manipulate?
-CH

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nerdline t1_j72q85y wrote

I’m very sorry but I am a historian and I find it very hard to reconcile with the idea of re-creating someone’s voice. I understand piecing together the speech itself but what is the reason for manipulating his voice in this way? Why not simply have someone else read the speech? But I guess that would negate the point of this exercise, which is to completely re-create something in the authors original voice. I guess my question is - why? Who is this for?

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_hugerobots_ t1_j740wpp wrote

Historical exploration? Artistic facsimile of an as-close-to-real event? Evolution of technology? Why not? Shirley🛫the why is explained in the post above or deeper if you’re genuinely interested.

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astro_nova t1_j7426gk wrote

Why not? This is way better than someone reading his speech. I could do that myself on Wikipedia.

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ChickenSpawner t1_j74kuqh wrote

Why weren't we satisfied with 16-bit computers, colorless TV or even radio?

How cool would it not be to be able to experience the room he sat in while giving the speech, as a fly on the wall, fully immersed in the moment? I personally think that would be a sweet experience, not only here but in so many other epic moments of history as well.

To me it's the natural evolution of our storytelling capabilities, as long as we stay rooted in the present and reality it self it could be a great tool.

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b-movies t1_j749e8b wrote

Clearly not you, but then maybe this raises uncomfortable questions for you in other areas, as surely as an academic you have an interest (responsibility?) in cultivating an interest in your specialism? This is clearly one way to do it, even if it doesn't appeal to you.

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nerdline t1_j754nq3 wrote

This is a good point, I think the hope is that both artifacts and the interpretation of those artifacts will be enough to be compelling to the Gen pop but those definitely have their limitations.

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MyHeartIsAncient t1_j75ykx8 wrote

To produce for us, a living history of that day, that speech and for a moment bask in whatever emotion might have been. Remembrance is a contact sport, not merely the memorisation of dates, names and places.

With a solid moral compass, projects like this can bring to life moments that most grade schoolers are happy to forget.

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Ctotheg t1_j74b0us wrote

Very interesting question! Why aren’t we simply satisfied with the content of the speech, the script and its message?

Why do we require the voice to be “as historically accurate as possible”? What’s next, a replicated 3D video of the event that we can experience as if it’s happening in front of us? To what end?

Why isn’t the script and the content of the speech enough to satisfy our inquiring minds?

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david-song t1_j74lqxq wrote

If we normalize this then we will also normalize AI retouches of other historical media, and it can be done wholesale in a way that Stalin could have only dreamed of

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nerdline t1_j74mufr wrote

Maybe I’m fear-mongering but yes this is exactly what I have anxiety about

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david-song t1_j74qg1h wrote

We need ways to sign and tag video and other media as authentic and ways for people and systems to vouch for it in a distributed fashion, and the tools to authenticate it built into media players. It needs to be part of the file formats, built into recorders and publishing processes. Then we can just treat everything that doesn't have proof as fake.

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nerdline t1_j74mqen wrote

I definitely think of this more as an existential question, and a question of when - if ever - we will be satisfied

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poly_lama t1_j74z6mi wrote

Why do we need to be satisfied with technological innovation?

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ChickenSpawner t1_j74ksjs wrote

Why weren't we satisfied with 16-bit computers, colorless TV or even radio?

How cool would it not be to be able to experience the room he sat in while giving the speech, as a fly on the wall, fully immersed in the moment? I personally think that would be a sweet experience, not only here but in so many other epic moments of history as well.

To me it's the natural evolution of our storytelling capabilities, as long as we stay rooted in the present and reality it self it could be a great tool.

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Witsand87 t1_j8cnvbx wrote

To me personally, as a former History and Art teacher, who also studied animation, it’s not about why really, it’s about could it be done? Things like this will always fall under “artistic impression”, as no matter the technology, we ourselves are only limited to the present, so we could never recreate something from the past 100% accurately. Unless we somehow figure out how to view the past in real time (which by the way is theoretically possible, maybe in the future). So best we can do is recreate parts of history to give us an idea of how it would have been. In the end it’s really just playing around for our own curiosity/ satisfaction/ etc.

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david-song t1_j74mb73 wrote

> To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the enthusiasm of the researchers in ethics I contacted

It's a hot topic right now and there's a fear that ordinary people will gain dangerous superpowers from machine learning models. So many people want to lock down access to and tighten controls, to regulate and have them edited and knobbled in ways that suit their agenda to the detriment of others.

Ethics researchers will have extraordinary powers if this comes to pass, and they are quite rightly very excited about this shift in power away from technologists.

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