Deepfakes are the next generation of video & audio manipulation
and often they look like this
swapping someone's face
on to someone else's
sometimes they're made to look accurate
other times it's just for laughs
It's also used to put characters in pretty ridiculous situations
like the Joker as a medieval knight
or putting Nicolas Cage in every role
This kind of facial recognition technology has been around for a long time
it's even been used in major movies
like Star Wars Rogue One
which is a prequel to a film that came out almost
40 years before
it they used it to make the actress playing Carrie Fisher look
the same age she was
and to bring Peter Cushing
who is the actor that played General Tarkin
back from the dead
it's also been used in the Fast and the Furious series
when Paul Walker died during the production of Furious 7
they mapped his face onto his brothers' bodies
so that they were able to complete the film
one of the people who worked on that film is Hao Li
he's one of the leading pioneers in the field
and is currently working on some
cutting-edge tech right now
when I sat down to chat with him
he talked about how making those graphics for Furious 7
in 2015 was very very different to
how easy it is to make deepfakes today thanks today
so it's about a couple of weeks for a few seconds
and that's usually just the animation
the amount of people that have to be involved
because everyone is an expert in one specific department
and the crazy thing about deepfakes
is that you just need that one person
deepfake tech has advanced so much it's accessible to pretty much everyone
so, how does this amazing technology work
part of the reason why pretty much anyone can make one
is that most of the heavy lifting is done by artificial intelligence
when it comes to face swapping
you feed the AI data
in this case, a photo
or lots and lots of photos of your subject
the AI then uses that info to map the face onto another one
deep fakes aren't just face swapping
they can also include things like manipulating someone's mouth to make it
seem like they're saying something they never did
while a lot of these videos
are cool and some are straight-up hilarious
there is a darker side to deep fakes
they can be used to spread misinformation and harass people
by making it seem like they've done or said something they never did
or never would
in the age of fake news this is a really big problem
and something a lot of people are really worried about right now
because it could be used to mislead the public
especially when it's applied to somebody in a position of power
like a politician
Imagine just a few weeks before a major election
a deepfake video comes out with one of the candidates
and it turns people's opinions against them and they end up losing the election
one of the most well-known politician deepfakes
was this video made by BuzzFeed about former US President Barack Obama
it's not the only one either
lots of videos have already been made of world leaders and influential people
like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
recently an Italian comedy show made a deep fake of their former PM Matteo Renzi
insulting other pollies
it was pretty clearly intended as a joke but a lot of people were fooled
and I imagine very confused
you might have noticed that videos like this one
and the Obama one use impersonators to make the subject say something that they never would
often that actually helps make it easier to spot a fake
because you can usually tell when someone's faking someone's voice
but that's changing
thanks to new technology like Lyrebird
it's a technology from Canada
that creates an imprint of someone's voice
all you need to do is say a couple of scripted lines into the program
and then it creates a complete copy of your voice
one journalist from Bloomberg got a chance to make an imprint of his voice and try out the tech
he ended up calling his mum
and his mom had no idea she was talking to a robot
all of this can seem pretty terrifying
so what does the future hold for deepfakes?
deepfake technology is constantly improving
making it much easier for people to make them
while that earlier video of Tom Cruise
took lots and lots of reference photos to make
we're now seeing deep fakes made from just one photo
or in this case one painting
and again it's not just these really tech-y researchers that are able to make these
you've got the Chinese app Zao which is really blowing up right now
and that gives users the chance to put themselves into movies
using just one photo of themselves
plus real-time face mapping is pretty much everywhere these days
in fact you've probably already seen a version of it on popular phone apps
this is me as the Joker
this is me as some old bloke with a beard
this is me as some weird Halloween-scary thing
and this is me as Donald Trump
you can see the technology isn't quite there yet
but it's getting better
and it's only going to get better
and this is me with a cone on my head
it's pretty good
Hao Li is actually working on that kind of tech right now
recently he was responsible for this real-time face mapping of Russian President Vladmir Putin
Li reckons virtually undetectable deepfakes are just around the corner
I mean intuitively my answer is
you know we're between six months and twelve months
based on the
it's just intuition right
based on what I've seen
the evolution so far
you know in the end we're all we're watching is pixels
and there should be a way to get pixels that are literally perfect
and I don't think it's gonna take that long
he says that not only is the video
quality getting a lot better
they're also becoming a lot easier to make
a recent study found the total number of deepfake vids on the internet
had practically doubled in just nine months between December 2018 and July 2019
that study was spearheaded by this guy Giorgio Patrini
I had a chat to him
about his cyber security company Deeptrace
which specialises in detecting deepfake videos
essentially we use the same type of technology
deep learning to understand the videos and in particular
to ascertain if they might be manipulated or completely fully synthesised by algorithm by generative models
There's one thing that both Li & Petrini agree
while virtually undetectable deepfakes aren't here just yet
it doesn't really matter
because people are already being fooled by them right now
just think of that Italian Prime Minister
so, are there certain things that people should look out for when trying to spot a fake
well not exactly
so in the long run it may be dangerous to just look at the content itself
in search for visual clues
because I think everybody I would agree
that we are very close to the time when videos are going to be convincing
you know fake vids are going to be convincing enough for fooling most people
the problem is telling people to look for things like changing skin tone
weird blurring
or unnatural shadows
might work right now
but those problems are eventually going to get fixed
for example in the early days of deepfakes
none of them ever blinked
but now they do
both Patrini and Li are
working on pretty complex tech solutions
like scanning individual pixels in a video for clues
or analyzing the unique way people move when they talk
but when it comes to regular people like your or I
Patrini and Li say it's not as simple as looking at what you're seeing
we need to educate people and make them think critically
which is why media literacy is so important
is that something believable that happened in the video
is that in line with what this person has said before
what is the reliability of the source where was this video published
has any major newspaper mentioned the video
search if they already did an investigation around it
if we are not equipped as humans
and we probably will not be any more in in a near future
to understand just visually
to trust with visual scrutiny
we can still leverage a lot of contextual information
to help us to sort out the truth I think
finally, how do you protect yourself from being turned into a deepfake
Li says there's not a lot you can do
instead he reckons lawmakers and social media platforms
need to step up and do their bit to deter people and make it harder for these kinds of videos to spread
basically work with lawmakers
and add in place regulations for the misuse of this technology
you can ruin someone
you can defame someone
you can ruin someone's reputation very easily
so on social media platforms there has to be mechanisms where people can do better fact-checking
you can flag something if there's something weird
they can even analyse how things are spreading
one quick thing before I go
Patrini said it's also really important to use those critical thinking skills
in situations where a video turns out not to be a deepfake
for example
Deeptrace was involved in an investigation earlier this year in the African nation of Gabon
long story short the president went missing for a few months
and people were demanding proof that he was alive and healthy
otherwise they were going to demand an election
when the President did finally reappear
it was in a short video that some people thought looked a bit odd
and it was actually accused of being a deepfake
the military attempted a coup which was unsuccessful
but people died
and an investigation later found no significant evidence of tampering or deepfakes in the video
it's an important lesson to always use those critical thinking skills when you're presented with a bit of information
and to make sure you actually look at it and process it
before mindlessly sharing it on