Deepfake World

Have you been fake-news'd lately? If you read mainstream newspapers or watch mainstream news television, the answer is a solid "yes" of course. But there's a whole new breed of fake-news knocking on the door, and it scares me more than all corporate media outlets combined.

_{source: YouTube}

I'm talking about the deepfake video's that have been growing in popularity since I forst saw Barack Obama give a speech he never actually gave.

Deepfake, a portmanteau of "deep learning" and "fake", is an artificial intelligence-based human image synthesis technique. It is used to combine and superimpose existing images and videos onto source images or videos.

Deepfakes may be used to create fake celebrity pornographic videos or revenge porn. Deepfake pornography surfaced on the Internet in 2017, particularly on Reddit, and has been banned by sites including Reddit, Twitter, and Pornhub. Deepfakes can be used to create fake news and malicious hoaxes.

_{You Won’t Believe What Obama Says In This Video!}

When I saw this a couple of months ago in the @helpie Discord channel, I was shocked for a fleeting moment, before joy and laughter took over, hearing "Obama's" closing statement: "Thank you, and stay woke bitches!" Also, after watching it a few times again, I was somewhat reassured because on close inspection, the fake isn't entirely convincing; the mouth just doesn't move naturally... YET.

See, I never let my imagination loose on this and was quite surprised to hear the other use-cases for this technique; want to see your favorite Hollywood star in a porn-flick? Or how about making a porn movie starring that terrible ex? Or why not let Trump say he just launched nukes on North Korea...? Really, the possibilities are endless, but none of them good.

It seems that this whole thing started as a way to fulfill adolescent boy's dreams of having sex with their favorite Hollywood actresses; according to the Wikipedia article the first deepfake to capture widespread attention was a Daisy Ridley porn video. Other targeted celebrities are Gal Gadot,
Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift and many more. Now these are all women of sizable worth and are very much capable to stand up for themselves, but that doesn't make it right.

And the software has gone mainstream, which means anybody can become a victim of this new kind of virtual sexual assault. In the video I'll link at the end of this post is a story about Australian student Noelle Martin, who has become a victim... She was courageous enough to give a TED talk about her ordeal... A shocking story, even if not explicitly directed against deepfake video's, but more against the misuse of personal media online.

_{Sexual predators edited my photos into porn - how I fought back | Noelle Martin | TEDxPerth}

But I digress... Porn seems to be the origin of this deepfake technique. I mean I already proved that I lack the imagination to think of any useful way to use this technique. What possible positive use could there be for methods to fake anything? I can think of a whole lot of reasons why bad people would want to use this...

More generally speaking: are we approaching an era in which we can no longer trust what we see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears? And if so: how could we possibly keep functioning as a society, a democracy, a republic or a people? I mean it's bad enough as it is now with the anonymity on the internet; anyone can put my name under anything they write and pass it of as mine. In fact, there's no way for you to really know it's me that's writing this right now. But it is me and I hope you still have enough trust in you to trust me on that.

And that's just it: if I can't even trust my eyes and ears when I see and hear someone speak to me... When my experience of the world is the only thing I can be sure of, what's left of even that basic truth when the world itself is becoming fake? And technology won't be stopped: it's here now, and just like crypto-currencies, it will never crawl back into Pandora's box. That's why I wrote this post: to get you thinking about this and try to find a way to deal with it. I'll leave you with a video from Wall Street Journal's Jason Bellini to get you started, as it discusses some of the most glaring dangers.

_{Deepfake Videos Are Getting Real and That’s a Problem | Moving Upstream}

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