Is the world as we know it ready for the real impact of deepfakes?
Deepfakes are rapidly becoming easier and quicker to create and they’re opening a door into a new form of cybercrime. Although the fake videos are still mostly seen as relatively harmful or even humorous, this craze could take a more sinister turn in the future and be at the heart of political scandals, cybercrime, or even unimaginable scenarios involving fake videos – and not just targeting public figures.
A deepfake is the technique of human-image synthesis based on artificial intelligence to create fake content either from scratch or using existing video designed to replicate the look and sound of a real human. Such videos can look incredibly real and currently many of these videos involve celebrities or public figures saying something outrageous or untrue.
New research shows a huge increase in the creation of deepfake videos, with the number online almost doubling in the last nine months alone. Deepfakes are increasing in quality at a swift rate, too. This video showing Bill Hader morphing effortlessly between Tom Cruise and Seth Rogan is just one example of how authentic these videos are looking, as well as sounding. Searching YouTube for the term ‘deepfake’ it will make you realize we are viewing the tip of the iceberg of what is to come.
In fact, we have already seen deepfake technology used for fraud, where a deepfaked voice was reportedly used to deepfakes seeing believing
