It is astonishing how technology seems to transform science fiction into reality – sometimes in heartening and sometimes in macabre, deeply disturbing ways. Deepfake technology is an advanced form of morphing that can manipulate images to make it seem as though people did and said things that they never in fact did. The Deepfake video of BJP leader Manoj Tiwari and another more recent one of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos draw attention to the possibilities. The videos themselves may see innocuous, but the implications ought to set alarm bells ringing for all of us.
DeepNude was the undressing app that promised to undress women for just $50. The app was shut down, but it gave us an idea of how technology is being used and how it can be used. The applications of this tech could be far wider and much more sinister as we are now discovering.
This video is made by TheFakening. It is obviously a clever manipulation and appears to be made for entertainment; perhaps to show off the possibilities and technical capabilities of clever amateurs sitting in their own homes. Perhaps the video amuses admirers of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and maybe it is meaningful for the vast fandom of the Star Trek universe. For those of us not in the know, the video doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. However, what it is clear that this is a very good quality, very convincing video.
This video is reasonably innocuous – one election candidate speaking in languages that he is not proficient in. This sort of thing doesn’t seem sinister or dangerous. However, consider how dirty politics can get and then imagine the application of this technology. We already have the ruling party's large and well organised IT cell as well as other organised online groups peddling their own often false narratives. Hence, the potential for misuse is huge.
We are already inundated with fake news on a daily basis. Now imagine if political parties were able to manipulate the videos of their opponents to make them do and say things that could be damaging in order to get political or electoral mileage. We already receive a deluge of WhatsApp forwards cleverly meant to manipulate our thinking and beliefs. If unscrupulous content providers also used AI face swap or Deepfakes, the potential for mayhem would increase exponentially.
See the image on the left? That is Amy Adams in the original video. On the right is the manipulated image using the face of Nicholas Cage.
14,000 deepfake videos were detected last year. An estimated 96% of them consisted of porn. One of the most common and sinister uses of deepfake tech is to create fake porn videos of celebrities. Superimposing the faces of celebrities on to the bodies of adult actors is just one of the applications. Earlier extensive training would be required for such AI-assisted face swapping; now however this is getting easier and easier.
Deepfakes can and have been used for financial fraud as well. The CEO of a UK based company was conned into parting with about €220,000 when a Deepfake voice pretending to be his boss convinced him to make a bank transfer. Right now we cannot contemplate fully the many implications of this technology and its unethical and criminal potential.
This video tells us about the many very clever and amusing ways in which Deepfake tech or face-swapping can be used. Yes, it does make us laugh. But now imagine if something like this was done to you or someone close to you simply by taking images off the internet. Scary? Extremely!
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