Deep Fakes -- Funny or Scary?
- leensteve
- Nov 15, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 16, 2021
Are your eyes (or ears) deceiving you?
If you're looking at what is called a “deep fake,” they probably are.
Deep fakes are computer-manipulated images and videos that can fool the observer into thinking they are looking at or listening to someone they think they know but who is actually not that person.
The body may be authentic but the face — skillfully applied to that body — belongs to someone else.
Here’s an example:
Or, it can be as simple as manipulating a famous person’s lips into saying something they would never say in real life (at least not in public).
Here’s an example of that:
Here’s a great compilation of some deep fakes. I really like the last one with Schwarzenegger playing Danny Davito in the movie “Twins”:
Video deep fakes were first developed in the early 1990s by researchers at American academic institutions. While early versions were a bit clumsy and fairly easy to detect, advances in computer and artificial intelligence technology have now made them almost undetectable.
Deep fakes are made using special computer algorithms that create a type of neural network called an autoencoder. (Yes, now it's getting over Steve's head, so you'll have to look up deep fakes to better understand it for yourself.)
Above: An actor (left) with Tom Cruise's face applied (right)
The term "deep fake" was first coined in 2017, so to that extent it's a relatively new phenomenon. As technology has advanced, social media giants Twitter and Facebook (Meta) have been working to create ways to detect deep fakes and remove them from their sites.
But will that be enough?
Suffice it to say that the incredible realism now incorporated in deep fakes have made them an object of major concern. Fraud -- through misinformation that could have serious consequences in the political arena by fooling the observer/voter into thinking they're receiving information from a trusted person -- is the main worry.
According to Wikipedia: "The primary pitfall (of deep fakes) is that humanity could fall into an age in which it can no longer be determined whether a medium's content corresponds to the truth."
Amen
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