Deepfakes — videos created using AI that can make it look like someone said or did something they have never done — are spreading faster than anyone anticipated. You’ve undoubtedly seen a few already: Mark Zuckerberg making a sinister speech about Facebook, President Obama calling Donald Trump “a total and complete dipshit,” and comedian Bill Hader physically morphing into Arnold Schwarzenegger as he impersonates him.
Bloomberg has a great, short video explaining deepfake videos in more detail.
Deep [X] is next:
The problem is that faked videos are only the beginning. While we’re fixated on deepfake videos, especially in society and elections time like ahead of the 2020 US elections, there are many more “deep [x]” applications casting an ominous shadow on the horizon. Researchers are already able to replicate and modulate voices, mimic body movements and gestures, and anticipate and generate reactive behaviors.
While we can’t stop them from being created, it absolutely is possible to hide them from everyday people. But we’ll need platforms, news organizations and our elected officials to intervene.
Historical traction of Deep X and Fake news on society and business
| What’s Next: Deepfake talking head videos are now relatively easy to create with a large enough corpus of data.What’s on the horizon are technologies that require far less data to generate realistic models not just of people, but of our pets and objects. |