Talk:Synthetic media

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 16 October 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Willland, Awchesley.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Possible source

Not sure if you have found this source, but you may find it useful in your drafting.

Also, while I am here, I don't think you need double or triple citations. When you have a claim, one good citation provides verifiability to the claim. If you have lots of sources you wish to refer to, consider adding them instead as links to articles for further reading. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 08:26, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

My problem with this is that some extraordinary claims are only supported by a single citation. This article is establishing a whole field of media and research. You would expect hundreds of available citations to support core facts, like the term use or what it means. Instead, what is cited is all that is available and the citations don't even agree with each other or the name. And once you go past the lead, the citations don't even support a connection to "synthetic media". I really don't have the time to go sentence by sentence to verify that cited content is indeed exactly what the sources say. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 10:46, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

The fundamental issue I (and a couple others) have recognized is that the use of "synthetic media" specifically as a description of this field is quite literally no more than two or so years old in mainstream parlance and was enabled by deepfakes. Before roughly 2018, discussion of synthetic media was rare, and there was no one, hard-established term for it, except arguably "AI-generated media" (which is still used interchangeably with "synthetic media"). Starting around 2018, more media pieces and research groups began honing in on "synthetic media" as the catch-all term, and this is why you can find constant references to synthetic media = AI-generated media, deepfakes, image synthesis, music synthesis, and so on but it becomes much more difficult to actually find papers and articles that actually go in depth with this. It's not quite as scarce as it was even a few months ago since "synthetic media" is now rapidly becoming a much more widely discussed field, but as HELLKNOWZ has mentioned, you have all these references and leads that outright say that "image synthesis is a form of synthetic media" but then barely use the term going forward in the articles or papers themselves, often because, again, it's still used interchangeably with "AI-generated" media or reduced to "image synthesis". The issue with this article is that it's being drafted two years too soon, before more numerous in-depth explanations of synthetic media could be made. And yet even then, as Sirfurboy has mentioned, there are more sources being written to support/reinforce the article, often even going in-depth. In fact, just today I discovered even more sources that define synthetic media which I planned to add to the main article:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UAVjBIs9gs
• Twitter's ban/regulation of synthetic media
• Another mention by Commonsense.org that deepfakes are a type of synthetic media
• Witness.org doing a bit more in-depth run-down of synthetic media, but again referencing the sub-branches
• Towards Data Science's "Fake New World" piece

It defines synthetic media yet again: "The idea behind SM is that an AI can be used to generate images, text, voice, videos and practically any other media."

It's frustrating because these cited articles do support these claims, but not in high-enough volume to do so comfortably, and because "synthetic media" is indeed always used as a starter with sub-branches then used going forward. — Yuli Ban (talk) 04:57, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Maybe take a look at WP:THREE and see what the best three sources you can find are. It is not the volume of sources you need - just three good ones. However, if there are not even three good sources then maybe you are right about this being written too soon. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, so we have to wait for a subject to be discussed in some secondary sources before we can say it is notable. If I see anything else I will definitely let you know. -- Sirfurboy (talk) 07:26, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

The three articles I've found that best exemplify synthetic media are:

• https://www.synthesia.io/blog-post/the-future-of-synthetic-media
• https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/deepfake-myths-common-misconceptions-about-synthetic-media/
• https://blog.paperspace.com/2020-guide-to-synthetic-media/

I've been reading the news lately, and it's become apparent that this subject has become urgent. I'll relent completely and delete whatever parts of the article are causing hiccups, just so it can go live as soon as possible and more people can become aware of the term. — Yuli Ban (talk) 18:22, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Synthesia article is not independent, the company in question is directly engaged in the field. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 18:29, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I see. There are two other good sources that might be able to replace it, the first being an academic paper.

• https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.11274
• https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/in-the-age-of-ai-is-seeing-still-believing — Yuli Ban (talk) 20:20, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

adding a music example

Should I attach an audio file sample (MP3) from Riffusion? It generates music from text using similar technology to Stable Diffusion. The music sample would be seven seconds long. Camdoodlebop (talk) 00:40, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

"Generative AI" is not another term for "Synthetic media"

Generative AI is a technology used to create synthetic media, but it is not equivalent. The space is more related to artificial intelligence and machine learning in general. The usage should be clarified to indicate that "Generative AI" (in the absence of a separate article) can be applied to create "Synthetic media", but it should be removed from the list of synonyms at the beginning of the article. 2600:1008:A102:242B:4577:3C38:7D3B:5D65 (talk) 19:02, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

These terms aren't exactly equivalent, but closely related. I think "synthetic media" means "media produced by generative AI." Jarble (talk) 04:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

"... media produced by generative AI." would be good. I'll go ahead and add that. Joe (talk) 01:11, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Origin of the term itself

I'm interested to know the origin of the term "synthetic media".

I notice the Brandalism folks use it:

> Recently [Bill Posters] has helped establish the field of synthetic media art with works created using emerging synthetic media (deep fake) technologies. His projects have received organic global media coverage in print, on radio and TV.

https://billposters.ch/bio/

...but it may well have an earlier or different origin. Benklaasen (talk) 10:15, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Merge Proposal: Synthetic media into Deepfake

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To not merge (yet); developing topics with some distinction present. Klbrain (talk) 13:00, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

---

The first sentence of this article defines Synthetic media as a "catch-all term" that is "also known colloquially as deepfakes".

Out of the 13 sources cited in the lead section, at least 4 define Synthetic media only as a synonym for deepfake, and 1 discusses deepfakes but does not mention Synthetic media at all.

If "Synthetic media" is a catch-all term that means "deepfakes" then should Synthetic media be merged into Deepfake? Is Deepfake an informal WP:NEOLOGISM, and should Synthetic media be preferred? Lwneal (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Using the Venture Beat article as a source, there are "Various incarnations of synthetic media — content generated or manipulated by AI ... However, synthetic media has also become synonymous with deepfakes — videos or images where the person depicted has been replaced with another person’s likeness." So, a "deepfake" is a type of synthetic media that tries to depict or impersonate a specific person, but "synthetic media" is a more general term that can also be other types of AI generated content. I think "deepfake" is the more commonly used term. I'd be fine with a merge either way, either a "deepfake" article with maybe a section on other types of synthetic media, or as we currently have here, a "synthetic media" article with a good-sized section on deepfakes. My preference would be "Synthetic media" as the main article that deepfake gets merged into, but I'm fine with a merge either way. Elspea756 (talk) 00:35, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Per the articles' leads: Deepfakes are cases where specifically faces are replaced, synthetic media is any case where generative AI is used to create or alter media. If anything's being merged, it should have the title Synthetic media, not Deepfake. JM (talk) 18:24, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Deepfake is the smaller category. The Venture Beat article gives examples of synthetic media in general, such as "virtual assistants, fashion models, and chatbots that synthesize text and speech", as well as "computer-generated Instagram influencer Lil Miquela, KFC’s virtual Colonel Sanders, and Shudu, the first digital supermodel." Because a lot of the notable discussion surrounding deepfake is about impersonation and misinformation specifically, such as deepfake pornography, it should continue to have its own article. Senorangel (talk) 04:40, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

As the term is still new, its hard to identify what the eventual meaning could be. deepfake, in my mind at least, has a connotation of being done specifically to misinform or lie or use someone's likeness without permission. I think the connotation may mean something else in the future, but I feel that's distinct enough to warrant separating out the articles... Might mean we need to swap portions of info between the two eventually though... Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Keep Deepfake separate from synthetic media OR alternatively merge Synthetic media into deepfake, but not the other way around. If these two are used synonymously, the term Deepfake is by far the WP:COMMONNAME of this new phenomenon. I rarely ever hear or see the term synthetic media, but the term deepfake is all over the place now. Name a noteworthy politician and there's probably a deepfake of them nowadays, like Nigel Farage or Donald Trump playing Minecraft. Even if synthetic media is the more formal term for these things, it's seldom used outside of academia. These things are usually called deepfakes in colloquial usage and by the media.

If however, the term synthetic media is used as a sort of umbrella term for a wider category of AI generated content, which includes deepfakes, then maybe it would be best to keep them separate or wait for some time longer before coming to a definitive decision on this. Since deepfakes themselves have established significant independent notability, what with all these fake celebrity and politician videos, photos and audios in addition to other strange deepfake creations, it doesn't make sense in my view to just merge it into synthetic media. Several countries have already drawn up laws and regulations to address the deepfake issue in particular, including the UK which made deepfake pornography illegal earlier this year. I'm not sure the same can be said for synthetic media as a whole. I think this gives credence to the view that deepfakes and synthetic media have independent notability from one another and so I think they shouldn't be merged. It's still early days though, so maybe it's best to wait it out and come to a more definitive decision down the line. AI technology is advancing at a rapid rate, so I have no doubt that there'll have already been several developments in this area which could enable a more informed or definitive view on this situation. ThatRandomGuy1 (talk) 21:38, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.