Deepfake videos are becoming more and more popular on social media and the danger is very serious. If you don’t know what deepfake is, simply put, it is when you take a video of someone and replace it with someone else’s likeness. While the act of faking content is not new, deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive. The technology was originally used in the movies and television to help correct the facial expressions of the actor/actress and their doubles. Put into the wrong hands, his could threaten our democracy, livelihood, and completely infiltrate our privacy. The software is out there and even free opensource for people to use. Other uses are:

Blackmail – Deepfakes can be used to generate blackmail materials that falsely incriminate a victim. However, since the fakes cannot reliably be distinguished from genuine materials, victims of actual blackmail can now claim that the true artifacts are fakes, granting them plausible deniability. The effect is to void credibility of existing blackmail materials, which erases loyalty to blackmailers and destroys the blackmailer’s control.

Pornography – Deepfakes can be used to generate blackmail materials that falsely incriminate a victim. However, since the fakes cannot reliably be distinguished from genuine materials, victims of actual blackmail can now claim that the true artifacts are fakes, granting them plausible deniability. The effect is to void credibility of existing blackmail materials, which erases loyalty to blackmailers and destroys the blackmailer’s control

Politics – This is an easy one since there are so many videos out there of Politicians speaking. It is easy to manipulate them in to saying anything using opensource technology. There have been deepfakes created for Donald Trump, Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin just to mention a few. A deepfake of Donald Trump was easily created based on a skit Jimmy Fallon performed on NBC’s The Tonight Show. Jimmy Fallon dressed up as Donald Trump and pretended to participate in a phone call with Barack Obama, conversing in a manner that presented him to be bragging about his primary win in Indiana. Of course, this was done as a comedic intent.

Deepfake

There are some companies out there that can confirm the validity of a video but damage may already be done. We need to be very careful about what we post online and to social media. As deepfake becomes more in the forefront I am hoping we can find a solution for this. It started in 2017 but looks like it is catching on more and more. Keep your eyes peeled and be careful!!