Not everyone may be familiar with “Deepfake” technology, but it might be a game changer for so-called fake news. Using the technology, one is be able to make anyone say or do anything, or at least make it appear so. Hence, the technology might usher in a new era where establishing credibility will become even harder.
The technology was once only available to researchers and academics but has been leaked by a reddit user around december 2017. Essentially the tech uses a form of artificial intelligence called deep learning to study footage of a real person. The algorithm can then allow a user to alter or add on to existing footage. The more footage that is fed to the learning algorithm, the more convincing the deep fake will be.
In a recent PSA, comedian Jordan Peele released a video showing Barack Obama insulting current US president Donald Trump in a rather childlike manner. However, the video (also shown above) is a complete fabrication, with Peele voicing the entire clip. The Peele PSA only took about 56 hours of Obama footage in order to convincingly produce the clip.
It is not surprising then that the deepfake tech is causing concern, with some NYU researchers calling it a “menace on the horizon”. Since the technology was leaked on reddit, it has mostly been used to create fake pornography images and clips with celebrities. The user has since been banned from reddit, however the tech is still available through downloadable apps.
Most importantly, the worry stems around the implications for the political landscape and discourse; it will be easy to falsify videos showing e.g. politicians saying things they have never said in real life or being implicated in corruption scandals. Likewise, it will be easy to discredit real footage as simply being the result of a deepfake.
Plenty of examples of deepfakes can already be found with a quick youtube search.
References
https://www.bloombergquint.com/topic/fake-videos-using-voice-clones#gs.RjVsecE
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/obama-fake-news-jordan-peele-psa-video-buzzfeed#.ugOXGqvAn3
