John: As technology grows more
sophisticated, so does the
potential for deception.
Last month, images went viral
purporting to show police
arresting Donald Trump and the
former president in an Orange
prisoner's jumpsuit.
But they were fakes -- trump
hadn't even been indicted yet.
There have been lots of other
so-called deepfakes on social
media, including an image
supposedly showing pope Francis
wearing a stylish puffy jacket.
William brangham spoke with jack
stubbs, the vice president of
intelligence at graphika, a
research firm that studies
online disinformation.
William: Jack stubbs, thank you
so much for being here.
Before we get into the weeds of
this, can you just start with a
clear definition of what a deep
fake actually is?
Jack: It's a good question, and
it's one that probably a lot
more people are asking
themselves than they were a few
months ago.
Deep fake is often the word used
to describe a piece of media
content that is being created by
artificial intelligence.
And typically you would use the
-- use deep fake to refer to ai
generated media content that is
also misleading.
So portraying something that
hasn't happened.
William: So I showed some of
those examples of deep fakes
that we've seen circulating
recently.
How else are deep fakes being
used today?
Jack: I mean, we see this type
of technology being used across
the board and a lot of it has a
very legitimate use case.
You know, some fantastic pieces
of art, for example, have been
created using this technology.
But unfortunately, you know, as
with anything, people will use
it for good things also people
out there will use it for less
good things and some that are
outright bad.
We study and kind of analyze a
whole host of different harmful
online behaviors from
, politically motivated
influence operations by foreign
nations to coordinated
harassment campaigns.
And what we're seeing is that
this technology is kind of
having an impact across all
those different arenas.
William: And how easy is this
technology to use?
I mean, I think people who are
familiar with old school sort of
photoshop, and creating those
images required a certain level
of technical know-how.
Is this technology similarly
difficult to master?
Jack: Well, that's one of the
things that's really interesting
and that's probably how much
stuff has changed over the last
six months.
So this type of technology using
computers to create images or
video, it's been around for a
long time, right?
I mean, special effects have
existed in the movies for
decades, and they've got
increasingly good.
The what we're seeing now is
that the sophistication of the
technology is increasing, but at
the same time, it's becoming
more accessible.
So the majority of these tools
are now available for anyone to
use on the internet for just a
handful of dollars and a
subscription fee.
And that means more people can
do it and the stuff they're able
to do with it, there's a wider
variety of outputs.
William: I mean, some of these
examples are pretty harmless.
I thought the pope looked pretty
swanky in that puffy coat.
But it's not too hard to imagine
the darker side of all of this.
Can you sketch out some of the
scarier possibilities for this?
Jack: Yeah, possibilities and
also things we've seen.
So for example, we very closely
track state aligned influence
operations from a host of
different countries that are
targeting political
conversations in the united
States and other western
countries.
We recently saw a Chinese state
aligned influence operation
using a.I.-generated fictitious
avatars in their videos to
create content about domestic
political issues like gun
violence, and then try and
distribute them online to
influence the conversations that
authentic online people were
engaged in.
William: Do we have anyway -- I
know this is tricky to measure
-- but is there any way to know
whether or not people are
actually being fooled by these
things?
Jack: It's very tricky to
measure and it probably comes
down to a case by case basis.
But I mean, that image of the
pope in a swanky puffy jacket is
a good example.
A lot of people, including
myself, saw that and thought,
it's probably true and it's
quite funny.
Most of these outfits, whether
it is ai generated video or
images they don't stand up to
, kind of deeper inspection and
scrutiny.
You'll see that maybe the hand
is actually quite blurred or
they're often quite bad at
showing text.
But they're good enough to
basically kind of pass a cursory
glance.
And that's the nature of the
internet, right?
It's an attention deficit
environment.
People don't look at things for
more than a few seconds before
making a reaction or feeling a
certain way.
William: We saw recently with
regards to artificial
intelligence that Elon Musk and
another of other prominent tech
people called for a moratorium,
a sort of pause on the
development of those
technologies.
Has anyone called for a
moratorium on the use of
deepfakes?
Jack: Not that I am aware of,
and I'm not sure that would be
practical or possible to enforce
honestly.
William: Because the cat is out
of the bag, so to speak?
Jack: Yeah, the cat is out of
the bag, the technology's
available and folks are going to
express themselves in good and
bad ways, you know, regardless
of what we try to do about it.
And to just emphasize, there are
a lot of really positive and
legitimate use cases for this
technology, not just in terms of
deepfake images, but when you
think about the technology we
now see with language models and
things like chat gpt this is an
, amazing tool.
I mean, it could organize
holidays for you and write
emails and basically be a
personal assistant.
But as with any technology, as
well as these legitimate kind of
good faith use cases, we'll see
that bad actors will use it for
bad use cases.
Whether that is conducting an
inauthentic influence operation
or coordinating an online
harassment campaign.
William: You're part of an
organization that studies
disinformation.
How do we go about helping
people combat this?
Jack: I think we need to talk
about it, and not particularly
original, but kind of tried and
tested answers.
A lot of it comes down to
education and media literacy.
As we were discussing earlier
many people don't interrogate
, the sources of media that they
see online for more than a
couple of seconds.
But we need to ingrain a
reaction of the people of this
is a really interesting and
funny picture of the pope in a
puffy jacket.
Is it actually true?
How do I know that and how is it
making me feel?
What is going to be my reaction
after I've kind of made that
more informed and thoughtful
assessment?
William: You mentioned how if
you really scrutinize these
images currently, you can
usually find flaws in the visual
detail that are a tip off.
But we know that technology is
getting better every day and
will continue to get better.
Do you think in this ongoing war
between fact and fiction, which
side is going to win out?
Jack: I can't say which side is
going to win out.
And I want to be optimistic.
You know, humans have existed
for a long time and technology
has had multiple leaps forward
that has brought these really
profound impacts to the way we
live.
And, you know, for the most
part, we're actually still live
in a good place, but we're
accelerating in terms of the
speed at which we're heading
towards the situation that some
people refer to as zero trust.
You know, this this environment,
particularly online, where it's
almost impossible to assess what
is true or what is false.
It's not just being presented as
something that never happened
that is real, on the flip side,
where that can be perfectly
real legitimate, authentic
, events, but it's impossible to
verify that's the case.
A good example of this would be
the access Hollywood tape from a
few years ago.
If that was released today, it'd
be very easy to argue that that
was real and be very hard to
prove otherwise.
William: Jack stubbs, thank you
for being here.
Jack: Thank you for having me.
♪♪