Deepfake is a technique for human image synthesis based on artificial intelligence. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos using a machine learning technique known as generative adversarial network. This new technological feat may perhaps be the single greatest threat to human lives, to date. Second to A.I. robot take over, but that’s for another day.
I’ve being looking more and more into this DeepFake stuff, not out of interest of seeing how technology has grown over the last few years but mostly out of fear of being misused. I started researching deepfakes to be able to identify them when I watching a deepfake video vs a real video. What I learned was that it was damm near impossible to do so in the first place.
What spurred this sudden interesting was the fact that I fell for a deepfake video myself. It wasn’t anything outrageous, in fact it was just a simple video in which the guy in question said something that didn’t seem out of place. It wasn’t until I read the comment section of that video did I realize just how dangerous this new technology had become, and why I felt there needs to be some sort of legislation to control it. Or just out right ban it.
I mean think about it this way, how will we be able to prove a video is deepfaked in the next 10 years, when it’s already getting hard to do so now? That tech would reach near-perfect by then, and distinguishing the real from the fake would be damm near impossible. Imagine this, someone makes the claim that they got leaked information on a prominent figure allegedly says that they’re planning on invading a country or planning on assassinating someone in a video.
This video then gets “leaked”, and thus creates a situation when the other parties involved reacts first and asks question later. I mean look at how people abused swatting today. This type of behaviour is notorious in the gaming community. The Swat team does not wait to verify the call before acting because they cannot. They have to take all threats or potential threats as absolute certainty until it has been confirmed to be fake. There’s even lives lost because this infamous trend. So if a video of a regular guy or girl that says they’re going to go shoot up a school, would you wait to see if the video is fake, or would you react first and then investigate later?
Now imagine what chaos deepfake technology can do in this day and age where people don’t even go beyond reading the title of an article and are easily sharing bogus articles and blogs. It’s would be anarchic! Well, that’s just my thoughts in opinion on this deepfake stuff. We gotta stay more vigilant if are to stay safe.
