Deepfakes - A Real Threat To Online Content

We see photoshopped images on social media all the time but we are usually smart enough to figure out the real and the fake ones most times. In this day and age where everyone’s online, it is important to not fall for the fake ones. However a new trend called as Deepfakes has currently got everyone’s attention due to the fact that it can edit videos of a person in such a realistic manner that is it so hard to figure out if it’s genuine or not.

There used to be a popular saying, ‘A camera never lies’. This was true for a couple of decades until editing a photo digitally became popular. It makes you wonder, a picture may still be worth a thousand words but what about the old saying, a camera never lies. But what is this same concept is implemented on a video. The rise of deepfakes make is possible.

Deepfakes are computer generated face swaps using Artificial Intelligence (AI). This technology has been used to make Donald Trump and Barack Obama and many other people say things they haven’t actually said. Some people are confident enough to claim that the tech isn’t that good and it could be easily spotted. But just take a minute and look at a Youtube video from a decade ago and a current deepfake video. A 2019 deepfake video looks better than a 2007 reality. So as technology progresses and Artificial intelligence is getting smarter, deepfakes is a serious problem for the future.

As time goes on, deepfakes are getting better and better and increasingly difficult to distinguish fake from the true content. Even before deepfakes, we have probably seen the same system at work in snapchat. Yes, that goofy dog filter everyone uses while posting selfies. The tech behind this, face detection is not exactly a new technology. Even old digital cameras had this feature. This technology detects faces by using differences in brightness in pixels. Today we still use this basic concept but it has advanced.

Can you guess which one of the above image is a screenshot of the real video?

Deepfakes is surprisingly easy to use. The first step is the download a particular video which you wish to edit. Secondly, download as many pictures of the person which you wish to edit and that it, the computer will do the rest of the processing. All you got to do is speak into a camera which supports 3D video and the video is ready. Scary isn’t it?