hi everybody it's me jennifer lopez
i'm so excited to be on start here my
absolute
favorite show let's talk about my new
album
or we could talk about the dangers of
deep fakes
they've gone from look-alikes that seem
a bit off
this is a dangerous time trust in what
is genuine
and what is not to scary good videos
that have gone viral
we have now reached the state where the
impersonations
are extremely well done extremely hard
to detect
i genuinely love the process of
manipulating people online for money
the technology behind deep fakes is
getting smarter
while new apps are making it easier the
better deep fakes
become the harder it becomes to assess
what is real and what is fake
so what are deep fakes how can you spot
them
and why could something as fun as a face
swap
actually be the start of something way
more sinister
[Music]
let's break down the word itself the
fake and deep fake is pretty
self-explanatory
while deep refers to deep learning by a
machine which is a type of artificial
intelligence
and this is used to impersonate people
into making saying things you know
they've never said
or acting like that they've acted before
probably the best way to explain it
is to show you how we did it so i'm here
with haldoon start here's graphics
genius and he's taken a video
of me and a video of jennifer lopez so i
used a free software online called deep
face slab
the first step is to turn your video
into hundreds of images basically the
frames
and the second step is to separate the
face
from the images so the software is
pinning my eyes
and my mouth to the center of the frame
so that it's easier to align
with jlo's face and then we go to the
step three which is the machine learning
i need to keep pressing p to update
because like it takes so much time i
just like put the die
on the pee and then put some weight on
and go grab coffee
[Music]
and then we have the final step
basically is adjusting the
skin tune and merging the two faces on
the final result
the whole process actually took a few
days but making deep fakes is getting
easier as the technology improves
and it's improving fast so what can we
do with it
well there are plenty of useful creative
and harmless applications
to all this deep fakery this
anti-malaria campaign had david beckham
speaking nine languages
malaria isn't just any disease
this documentary used deep fakes to hide
the real faces
of lgbtq people in chechnya who were
afraid to be identified
there are slightly weirder uses as well
the website myheritage reanimates photos
of your dearly departed relatives
and some people find that comforting
what all of those examples have in
common
is that they're not about trying to
deceive people and the people involved
are all in on it the problem is when
deep fakes are made of people without
their consent
and so often that means women there are
people out there using pictures of
celebrities
and ordinary women and deep faking them
onto pornography actors
a study in the netherlands found that a
staggering 96
of the deep fakes online were
non-consensual porn
it's women's bodies uh identities um
and rights that are being transgressed
it's humiliating it's embarrassing and
particularly
with deep flex becoming so good it's
very difficult to convince people that
that isn't you because if it looks like
you it might as well be you
we we see big impacts on people's mental
health uh depression anxiety
and it goes beyond the world of porn a
mother in pennsylvania has been accused
of trying to discredit
three of her daughter's rivals on a
cheerleading squad where police said she
made deep fakes of them naked
drinking and smoking financial scammers
are using deep fake technology too
in 2019 criminals used ai software to
impersonate the voice of a businessman's
boss
on the phone they convinced him to
transfer more than 240
000 to a bogus hungarian bank account so
the dangers of deep fakes are already
real
and they're adding to a whole world of
misinformation
a world where it can already be hard to
know what's true and what's not
where actual facts are dismissed as
false conspiracy theories thrive
and powerful states run sophisticated
disinformation campaigns
most of the misinformation we see in
most of what people get affected by
is much lower tech things photos taken
out of context
things that are simple photoshop jobs
much simpler and cheaper ways of making
misinformation go
viral like this video of nancy pelosi a
senior u.s democrat who was made to look
drunk
just by slowing down the video it's
really sad and here's the thing
and i told this to the room it's really
sad
here's the thing and i told this to the
room but the power of deep fake
technology
takes it all to another level in the old
days
if you wanted to threaten the united
states you needed 10 aircraft carriers
and nuclear weapons and long-range
missiles increasingly all you need is
the ability to produce
a very realistic fake video what deep
fakes do
is create a climate of doubt to the
point where what's
actually real can be mistaken as
something fake
that's what happened in gabon
[Music]
back in 2019 president ali bongo hadn't
been seen in public for months
and when the government released this
video he didn't really look like himself
turns out the president had suffered a
stroke that changed how he looked
but some people were convinced he was
dead and that the video was a deep fake
a week later a group of soldiers
attempted a coup
whoa so how can we spot deep fakes
well there are some signs we can look
for there might be differences in
resolution
or if you see ghosting around the face
or blurring around the ears or hairline
chances are a computer made it what i
tell people is if something makes you
feel a strong emotion
either really good or really mad that's
the time to take an extra second
and check to see if it's real but the
reality is
that as deep fakes get better they'll
get harder and harder to spot
researchers at universities and
companies like microsoft and facebook
are working on automated software to
find and flag them
organizations like the un europol and
the fbi
are all actively looking into how to
counter deep fakes as a threat
we're always in this arms race of kind
of a new technology
exists people start using it for bad
things and then we kind of
adjust our understanding and move
forward there's nothing inherently bad
about the technology
but we know the harm it can do so what
you and i can do
is be more aware don't be fooled by the
rocks that i got
or the face that i got either
[Music]
if you want to see more start here
episodes subscribe to the al jazeera
youtube channel and our facebook
instagram and twitter pages where we
release new shows
every week see you there
you