Deepfakes are becoming more popular throughout the world, and becoming more commonly mentioned in the news. Due to many upcoming elections around the world, deepfakes are changing our perspectives on democracy and AI, and whether it will be used for good or harm. Can we still trust digital services, including news and what else we may have thought as reliable sources?
What exactly are deepfakes? Deep learning is a method of AI, one that studies facial expressions to produce deepfakes, artificial images or videos. Deep learning is like any other form of machine learning, as the software is trained with many pictures, but in this case, they learn how to copy human features. From this description, you may be able to tell some of the obvious problems.
Most people blindly listen to and trust things they see on the internet, and deepfakes can make this habit enormously worse. This is what deepfakes feed off of, and would make telling real from fake much harder. Deepfakes are used for scams, fake politics, and various other unethical practices. Pairing audio deepfakes, or voice cloning, with deepfake videos can make celebrities and politicians endorse or say things that they have never said. So why does this matter to our entire world? Most people decide on who to vote for by what they can understand of a candidate over the internet, and by seeing fake videos of politicians, they might decide to vote or not vote in someone’s favor just because of false images and videos. This would end up harming our democracy, as deepfake videos can be created by political parties to falsely sway voters. With many worldwide elections taking place, with no rules against these deepfakes, we may see switches in major political parties solely based off fake information. A large possibility for our technology driven world.
As of right now, deepfake technology is still being refined and perfected, but it can still corrupt minds when looking without a second glace. Most people who are likely to become victims are those unaware, which is why it is important to learn how to spot the difference between deepfakes and true videos and audios. A quick way to tell the difference between deepfakes and reality is by studying features of said person in an image or recording. If some features are inconsistent or seem off, most likely the image or videos are not true. Unusual body, face, or facial expressions are also a telling sign of deepfakes,
While deepfakes are still advancing, it is hard to tell between real or fake, and with more time, it may become almost impossible to tell with your bare eyes. AI may result in new rules a regulations against technology, especially in aspects surrounding money and politics. All there is to do now is be careful of what you trust, and do research towards topics which would be important to major decisions you make based off what you see online.
RELATED STORIES:
https://security.virginia.edu/deepfakes
https://withpersona.com/blog/what-are-deepfakes
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107292
https://www.fortinet.com/resources/cyberglossary/deepfake
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/13/what-are-deepfakes-and-how-can-you-spot-them
TAKE ACTION:
https://staysafeonline.org/resources/how-to-protect-yourself-against-deepfakes/
