Walter Scheirer

Computer Science and Engineering

Phone
574-631-2436
Email
walter.scheirer@nd.edu
Website

Assistant Professor

  • Image forensics
  • Computer vision
  • Machine learning
  • Biometrics

Video

Scheirer’s Latest News

Scheirer in the News

Wisconsin Public Radio

Does AI dream?

The internet is indeed overflowing with fake content, says computer scientist Walter Scheirer. 

Image of Donald Trump leading crowd down flag-lined street is AI-generated | Fact check

The original also contains several hallmarks of AI-generated images that are less prominent in the more recent version, Walter Scheirer, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame, told USA TODAY in an email.

‘A History of Fake Things on the Internet’

Author Walter Scheirer discusses his new book about how advances in technology brought us to the point where faked texts, images, and video content are nearly indistinguishable from what is authentic or true.

Notre Dame professor weighs in on creative uses for Artificial Intelligence

Walter Scheirer, a Notre Dame Associate Professor and author of "A History of Fake Things on the Internet," says AI and human creativity is not mutually exclusive.

Nautilus

Stop Worrying About Deepfakes

And yet, when Walter Scheirer, a computer scientist and media forensics expert at the University of Notre Dame, sent his students to scour the internet for examples of AI-doctored videos, what they brought back surprised him. It was, he says, “memes all the way down.”

IEEE Spectrum

Fakes: Not an Internet Thing, a Human Thing

University of Notre Dame computer science professor WalterJ. Scheirer has come at this core problem of online speech, including images, from an unconventional direction. 

Yes, people lie online. But it may matter less than we fear.

 In “A History of Fake Things on the Internet,” computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer proposes that much of what has been disparaged as “misinformation” is best considered under a different rubric: that of art.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

The computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer has worked in media forensics for years. He understands more than most how these new technologies could set off a society-wide epistemic meltdown, yet he sees no signs that they are doing so. Doctored videos online delight, taunt, jolt, menace, arouse, and amuse, but they rarely deceive. As Scheirer argues in his new book, “A History of Fake Things on the Internet” (Stanford), the situation just isn’t as bad as it looks.

Salon

Limits to growth: Can AI’s voracious appetite for data be tamed?

"It seems to me that the big internet companies are very reluctant to even talk about this because it threatens their core business," said Walter Scheirer, a computer scientist at the University of Notre Dame.