If you’re not familiar with the concept of deepfakes, get ready to get nervous. Imagine being able to use artificial intelligence and deep machine learning (thus the name) to create video footage so realistic that, in some cases, only experts might potentially tell the difference. We may already be used to this idea coming from Hollywood, where some deceased actors have appeared in movies. However, the technology is not limited to multi-million dollar studios. Apps like FakeApp have made comparable abilities available to the layperson. And that’s where this concept becomes concerning.
- Most Deepfakes Are Porn, and They’re Multiplying Fast [Wired] ” Startup Deeptrace took a kind of deepfake census during June and July to inform its work on detection tools it hopes to sell to news organizations and online platforms. It found almost 15,000 videos openly presented as deepfakes—nearly twice as many as seven months earlier. Some 96 percent of the deepfakes circulating in the wild were pornographic, Deeptrace says. “
- California cracks down on political and pornographic deepfakes [Engadget] ” California Assembly representative Marc Berman said that such videos could deceive the public and affect election outcomes. ‘Voters have a right to know when video, audio, and images that they are being shown, to try to influence their vote in an upcoming election, have been manipulated and do not represent reality.’ “
- You’ve been warned: Full body deepfakes are the next step in AI-based human mimicry [Fast Company] ” In August 2018, University of California Berkeley researchers released a paper and video titled ‘Everybody Dance Now,’ demonstrating how deep learning algorithms can transfer a professional dancers’ moves onto the bodies of amateurs. While primitive, it showed that machine learning researchers are tackling the more difficult task of creating full body deepfakes.”
- Prepare for the Deepfake Era of Web Video [Wired] ” That variety of uses means that people should adjust how they think about video in the deepfakes era, Gregory says. Even if technology could accurately flag fakes—so far, none can—the context of a clip is crucial. A perfectly fake president could be political chicanery, or high-production-quality satire. “
From the Ohio Web Library:
- FIGHTING DEEPFAKES GETS REAL ( Warner, B. (2019). Fighting Deepfakes Gets Real. Fortune, 180(2), 25–27. )
- Scammers Go Phishing With Deepfakes ( Eddy, M. (2019). Scammers Go Phishing With Deepfakes. PC Magazine, 33–36. )
- Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War: The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics ( Chesney, R., & Citron, D. (2019). Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War: The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics. Foreign Affairs, 98(1), 147–155. )
