After recently seeing the deep fake video of Obama for one of the lectures it got me thinking about the topic again. For those who are unfamiliar with the word, deepfakes are videos or pictures that are altered, which usually happens with AI. They are usually different from normal edited pictures or videos, and they can be completely made up by AI. They are usually portrayed as very negative, and this video got me thinking again about ways in which they could have a positive impact.
The negatives
The main concern that is often heard when talking about deepfakes are they can make it very easy to spread misinformation. This is made worse by the fact that they are relatively easy to make, and this could be a real problem, as they could be and often are used to spread misinformation(Finger, 2022). Since it makes anyone able to frame someone as having said something, it could easily be used by political parties or other entities to spread propaganda for their cause. While it is currently still possible to see that something is clearly made by AI(Froehlich, 2024), some people do not make an effort to check for these things when they see a video of someone saying something.
The positives
This got me wondering what some of the positive applications of such a technology could be however. An obvious fact here is the entertainment value, as they are often used for memes nowadays. More seriously however, they might perhaps have a future in the film or marketing industries. One example here is how there is an influencer called Lil Miquela who has over 3 million followers and is a fake person created by deepfakes(Mustak et al, 2023). This shows how brands can use it to reach out to customers more easily. They could also be used in order to edit older actors to look younger for example. Lastly, I think that they could even be used by firms if the VR metaverse ever takes off in order to realistically create people.
It is obviously still worth asking whether these positive outweigh the many downsides and dangers that deepfakes present. I am curious what you think about this. What are some positive applications you could see deepfakes being used for? Or is this just a dangerous development? I think it does have potential but is still very likely to do more harm than good.
Sources:
Finger, L. (2022, September 8). Overview of how to create deepfakes – it’s scarily simple. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2022/09/08/overview-of-how-to-create-deepfakesits-scarily-simple/
Froehlich, A. (2024, May 7). How to detect deepfakes manually and using AI: TechTarget. Security. https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/How-to-detect-deepfakes-manually-and-using-AI#:~:text=For%20images%20and%20video%20files,likeness%20that%20AI%20cannot%20overcome.
Mustak, M., Salminen, J., Mäntymäki, M., Rahman, A., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2023). Deepfakes: Deceptions, mitigations, and opportunities. Journal of Business Research, 154, 113368.
