NEXT LEVEL SHIT
“I’m fine, Mom,” Zara says on the phone. She’s sitting in Michael’s car on the way to her grandparents’ house in Lüneburg. “Don’t worry.”
As if that were possible, Yasira thinks, but says: “That’s a relief. Give Michael a hug from me.”
“But he’s driving now,” Zara replies laughing.
Yasira is proud of how cool her daughter has remained. She had been afraid that she would have to argue with her, but Zara immediately understood the danger. She probably doesn’t mind the week off school either.
“Do you have any idea who could have taken the photo in the schoolyard?” asks Yasira.
“No. I can’t imagine it was someone from my class. I mean, some boys are stupid, but not that stupid.”
“Hmm.”
“What about you, anyway?” asks Zara. “If I’m in danger, then you’re in even more danger.”
That’s true, of course. But it’s Yasira’s work that puts her in danger. She chose this path years ago, well aware that there are much safer professions. Zara, however, did not choose this. That’s not fair. It’s just not fair.
“I can take care of myself,” says Yasira. “Always been the best at the shooting range. Don’t worry.”
Now she had thoughtlessly demanded the same impossibility from her daughter as the latter had demanded from her. Not to worry. As if.
“Can you pass me to Michael?”
“Sure.”
Right away, she hears Michael’s gruff voice: “We’re not being followed. Rest assured. Even if someone had been waiting outside the school, I definitely lost them in the city traffic.”
“Yeah,” she hears her daughter yell. “Michael is driving like a maniac!”
“I know,” says Yasira, smiling. “I know.”
That evening, she sits alone in her kitchen.
It is so silent. So damn silent. No music from Zara’s room.
No Friends on TV. It’s usually only this silent when Zara is on a school trip or spending the night at a friend’s house.
But this is a different kind of silence.
Today it’s a cold silence. Even though Zara is only at Grandma and Grandpa’s.
Michael even waited until the local standby officers relieved him.
Zara’s safe. Right? Then why does the silence in her apartment feel so damn cold?
She has to solve this case as quickly as possible to get out of this nightmare.
She wants her life back. She wants her daughter back.
Yasira sits down at the electric piano, something she hasn’t done for a long time, and plays Chopin.
It doesn’t help much to dispel her gloomy mood.
How must Frank Palmer be feeling? Then her thoughts jump back to the video.
Is it really fake? Yasira considers telling Palmer about her suspicions, but decides against it. She needs evidence first.
The next morning, Yasira calls Zara’s principal from her office.
She thought long and hard about what the best strategy would be, ultimately deciding in favor of openness.
The class must be talked to. If one of Zara’s classmates took the picture, they need to be made aware that it wasn’t just a stupid student prank, but potentially life-threatening.
She spends the rest of the morning scrutinizing various right-wing groups in Germany.
There are an astonishing number of them.
AfD members, libertarians, identitarians, Reichsbürger, right-wing esoterics, folkish ecologists, autonomous nationalists, cross-front activists, info warriors, right-wing hooligans, neo-Nazis .
. . The list seems endless. And if you look at their collective activities, the damage they have already caused is enormous.
It is completely incomprehensible to Yasira that the supposedly resilient democracy has failed to strike back with full force long ago.
But which of these people could be behind the video?
Who would have the technical capabilities?
Or was Katja Jürgens right? Was it the Russians?
The AfD in government would be a lucky break for Putin.
So much is clear. Yasira keeps stumbling across calls for the demonstration this afternoon. Seems like it’s going to be a big deal.
By noon, Yasira is fed up and quits her research. She’s not getting anywhere. Fortunately, they have an appointment at AlmostReal at three p.m. She needs to get out of here. Away from this screen.
After lunch, Yasira and Michael head to the start-up’s headquarters. According to the company itself, they are the only German company “involved in AI-based image generation on a global scale.” The acquisition by Google has apparently proven that.
However, the premises in Neukolln are not as fancy as you would expect from Google or Apple as seen on TV. Instead, it is a former industrial building filled with cubicles with numerous computers and screens. It doesn’t look all that different from the BKA.
Yasira and Michael have an appointment with the PR lady and a business clown from AlmostReal. Mandy and Ryan. Yasira had requested the technical director to attend the meeting, but he is nowhere to be seen.
“I’d like to ask you to keep the following conversation confidential,” Yasira says right at the beginning, “as it pertains to an ongoing police investigation.”
She hopes to keep the platitudes as short as possible.
“What’s it about?” Mandy asks, surprised.
“Perhaps it would be advisable for us to consult a lawyer?” Ryan inquires. His German is very good, but he has a slight accent. English? Irish? American?
“No. Don’t worry,” says Michael. “We’re just interested in your expertise.”
At that moment, the door opens. A man with a ponytail comes in.
“Excuse me! Hi! I’m Tom Schiller. Like the poet. Not the actor. I’m the CTO.”
Yasira or Michael must have looked puzzled, because Tom Schiller adds: “The Chief Technical Officer. The technical director.”
Yasira nods. Tom Schiller sits down and seems to instantly go into a kind of standby mode.
She estimates him to be in his late twenties.
He’s probably not used to not having a screen in front of his eyes.
She would have liked to bet Michael whether Mr. Poet could endure their entire conversation without checking his phone in between.
“We’re investigating the case of Lena Palmer,” Michael begins, “I’m sure you’ve heard about it.”
“The video,” says the PR woman.
“Yes. The video,” says Yasira.
“And what does that have to do with us?” asks the business clown.
Yasira smiles. “Nothing, I hope.”
Mandy catches on faster than her boss. “You’re wondering if the video could be computer generated? If it’s a fake?”
Tom Schiller, the technical director, suddenly comes back to life. “We have naturally discussed this internally,” he says.
“You did?” Yasira asks in astonishment. “Why?”
“We do that with a lot of videos that go viral now. An occupational disease, I guess.”
“And what conclusion did you come to?”
“Most likely genuine. We stopped discussing it when it became clear that the girl is actually missing.”
“Most likely genuine?” asks Yasira. “So you’re not sure?”
“Well, that’s basically the gist of what we’re doing. We’re trying to generate something that looks real and, ideally, is indistinguishable from authentic footage.”
“Could someone raid Lena Palmer’s Instagram account to generate new videos of her?”
“Wicked . . .” says Tom. “I see . . . Of course. That would work, but . . .”
“But?”
“If the video is fake, then it’s next level shit. You know what I mean? It’s perfect. It doesn’t have any of the usual telltales.”
“The usual telltales?”
“Well, you know. AI errors. You might know them from images. Six fingers and all that.”
“Six fingers?” asks Yasira.
“What’s currently freely available in terms of AI image generation tools usually makes strange mistakes.
The software often struggles with our fingers.
That’s why people in these images sometimes have six fingers or other strange details.
The curvatures of our ears also cause problems for AI.
In general, proportions are often not quite right.
It’s not immediately noticeable, but if you look closely, it’s odd.
In videos there are other typical errors.
When one object moves in front of another, there is sometimes a flickering effect.
Occasionally, the software also produces paradoxes in three-dimensional space.
After all, it has no understanding of this.
There may be a face in the car, but the corresponding hand is outside the window or something.
Such errors become most apparent when you slow down the playback speed.
Or by clicking through the individual frames.
That’s the best way to spot the flaws. But there are none of these in the Lena video. No glitches.”
“Is your product next level shit?” Yasira asks. “Could it generate a video like this?”
“Well . . .” Tom begins, but unfortunately the business clown intervenes.
“I’m sorry, but we’re entering the area that involves our trade secrets. I’m sure you understand that we can’t discuss the status of our developments in public before they are released.”
Even though the objection came from Ryan, Yasira doesn’t take her eyes off the young CTO. Tom Schiller is obviously uneasy.
“I’m not interested in company secrets,” says Yasira. “A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would suffice for me.”
“I need to ask you,” Ryan replies, “to reach out to our lawyer if you require more information . . .”
Yasira makes one last attempt. “ I understand, of course, that your company wouldn’t want to be publicly associated with the video, but . . .”
“Please address any further questions to our lawyer.”
Yasira wants to say something, but Michael interrupts her.
“I think you’ve got your answer,” he says. “A ‘no’ wouldn’t have been such a complicated response.”
Ryan gets up, Mandy and Tom Schiller follow his lead.
“In all your business plans, feasibility studies and strategy meetings, have you ever once thought about what you’re actually unleashing?
” asks Yasira. “Have you ever asked yourself not only ‘how,’ but ‘should we at all?’ Do you have any idea what it does to the world when images can no longer be trusted?”
“Could images ever be trusted?” Mandy retorts.
“If we don’t develop these tools, someone else will,” Ryan says.
“The toothpaste is out of the tube,” adds Mandy.
Always the same old song, Yasira thinks.
“What you’re creating is dangerous in two ways,” she says.
“It’s not only that every sensational video could be fake.
Soon every genuine video of evidence will also be doubted as fake.
Then Trump could, as he once claimed, actually shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing a single voter, simply because he would claim the evidence videos were fake. ”
She scrutinizes Tom Schiller. The young man looks down. She looks at Ryan. The business clown stares back. These thoughts can’t be new to him, can they?
“I can assure you,” Ryan finally says, “that we at AlmostReal have nothing to do with this terrible video. Any allegation to that effect will be considered malicious defamation against which we will take legal action.”
On their way out, Yasira discreetly gives her partner a signal. Michael picks up on it and keeps Mandy and Ryan distracted with some blah blah blah.
The distraction allows Yasira to slip Tom Schiller her business card unnoticed. She has a strong suspicion that he was willing to say more and would like to speak to him without his “parents.”