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Deepfakes
A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: Deepfakes By Ciarán Quinn, SS Business Studies and German Recently, a video emerged of Tom Cruise in a jewellery shop. While this situation in itself is hardly eyebrow raising, the fact that the American actor was speaking fluent Mandarin in the tone reflective of a giddy teenager certainly is. Even if the video is in jest and self-evidently questionable as to its authenticity, such clips raise questions regarding the extent of artificial intelligence’s ability to create “deepfake” videos. Consequently, and more worryingly, it also highlights what is at stake in the financial, political, and legal spheres. Deepfake, a term coined in 2017 by a user on Reddit, refers to the use of deep learning by artificial intelligence to allow for the transfer of one’s likeness onto another’s, whether that be in the form of a video address or a voice message. Deepfakes aren’t a new phenomenon; their origins are traceable to academic endeavours in the 1990s, as well as initial sources of photo editing occuring in the 18th century, with double exposure of film allowing for photos to be merged together. Much of this progress was subsequently picked up by online communities, from which deepfake technology has flourished, both for better and for worse. This technology has allowed for bias and prejudice in film to be addressed through the reimaging of characters as people of colour or in reversed gender roles. Deepfake technology has also allowed for the re-touching of historical footage. This means that deepfake infused films are becoming more accessible and relatable to younger generations, as well as more sentimental purposes such as enabling portraits of loved ones to become alive and smile, as seen on social media platforms such as TikTok. What makes deepfake technology all the more attractive and applicable is its availability online through outlets such as Github, which provides as many as 80 individual open source deepfake-applications. As with many great inventions, there is a sinister side. Unfortunately, the surge in the uptake of deepfake footage (15,00 deepfake videos online in 2019 versus 145,000 in 2020, spurred on by the pandemic) has caused it to fall victim to malevolent purposes. The propensity of deepfake technology to put a person’s face on another’s body has had vicious ramifications. This has been utilized to spread misinformation to the detriment of political opponents, one such example being a video circulated in 2019 of the House of Representantives speaker Nancy Pelosi appearing to slur her words while giving a speech. While the potential for such deepfaked videos to harm a politican’s standing are clear, what is even more frightening is its effect on the ordinary person. Deepfake technology has allowed for an upsurge in online blackmailing, with victims of such attacks having their likeness superimposed onto staged videos, which are subsequently uploaded to pornographic sites as a means of humiliation. The likeness of victims is scrubbed from social media platforms, which is then input into artificial technology to produce such footage. The same holds true for audio footage, for example audio recordings of a business executive requesting a large transfer under dubious circumstances resulting in the fraudulent theft of millions of euros. One of the first reported cases of fraud involving deepfakes occurred in 2019 when a U.K. based company was stripped of just over €200,000, when a German-accented partner requested the urgent transfer of the sum to a Hungarian supplier, which ultimately ended up in a Mexican bank account before disappearing. Despite the relatively recent deployment of deepfake technology in such illegal activities, estimations placed the value of deepfake facilitated fraud at over $250 million in 2020. Even with such acknowledgement of the current and growing threat of deepfake technology, one may still retain solace in their self-awareness. Deepfakes currently struggle to defeat the human eye, and upon close inspection it is relatively easy to ascertain what is reality, and what is a deepfake. The battle against deepfakes
