Deepfakes Funny or threatening

seeing

is believing i always believe this

growing up that if i could see something

in front of my face

interact with their hero then it must be

real right

well this train of thought is might not

be able to apply to the next generation

growing up

because the fact is in this digital age

falsifying information is bigger than

ever

in fact a recent mit study found that a

false story reaches

1 500 people six times quicker

on average than a true story does

a new method of falsifying digital media

are called deep fakes

and this is what i’m going to discuss

today

i’m going to tackle the question of are

deep fakes dangerous

or are they a powerful tool for creators

so what are deep fakes well deep fakes

are a synthetic

media in which a person can take an

existing image

or video and replace it with somebody

else’s likeness

the term comes from mixing deep learning

which is a type of artificial

intelligence

and fake together the process is done by

feeding lots of images of a person

into an algorithm called g a n

the algorithm uses both spatial and

temporal information

to learn the mapping from one person to

another

so for instance my eye might be four

centimeters wide and they’ll

map that important information onto the

face that i’m going to replace

the more pictures and the more angles of

someone’s face the more realistic the

deep fake is

and this is why i believe deep fakes are

mostly made of famous people

as a vast quantity of their pictures are

publicly available

on the internet so you might be thinking

this kind of tool

is really only available to people who

can understand

the algorithm however from a really

quick search on the app store it took me

around three minutes to make this deep

fake of me

on billy eilish’s body um

this is definitely not the most

sophisticated deep fake possible

believe me um but it does show how

easily these can be made

and this is what worries some people

the term deep fake might not be familiar

to you and

i wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never

heard of deep fakes ever before

and you might be thinking well george

you study computer science it’s not my

fault i’ve never heard of them

and you’d actually be right it’s not

your fault in fact

many businesses and industries are

trying to hide deep fakes from you

by banning them from their platforms in

january this year

facebook announced it will be banning

deep fakes from their site

and many other companies followed this

lead

such as twitter and even california has

passed a law

meaning that altered deep fakes videos

have been banned from influencing

elections

so why have deep fakes been banned from

so many platforms

and why are they viewed as dangerous

well

deep fakes are seen as to governments

and large businesses as dangerous due to

the risk of the correlation with deep

fakes

and fake news for example you could

create a deep fake of mark zuckerberg

saying i’ve stolen everybody’s data

or a video of boris johnson on the news

saying

eating chocolate is against the law and

yes that was the worst scenario i could

think of

um in the wrong hands these videos could

cause huge panic to the public and lead

people to make rush decisions without

looking

into the source of the video

defects can also be used by criminals to

impersonate

people in business to get privileged

information

in march 2019 the chief of a uk energy

firm paid nearly

200 000 pounds into a hungarian bank

account

after being phoned by a fraudster who

mimicked the german ceo’s voice

the employee heard the voice and

recognized its slight german accent

and instantly thought it was the ceo

for a year i worked in a company in

security

and in my team we educated people about

the recent threats

and how to protect against them most

attacks on big

businesses occur initially through some

kind of

insider threat by this i mean

uh employee making an unintentional

mistake

these attacks can come through phishing

emails downloading

unauthorized software which could have

bugs hidden in them

and other things like that

humans have an innate instinct to trust

and try and help other people therefore

when they hear a voice that’s familiar

or see a face that they recognize

we instantly lower our guards and trust

the information

we’re receiving that’s why deep fix is

so efficient in tricking people

as they play on human nature and

exploit our natural instincts and this

is why deep fix can be seen as so

dangerous

however it’s important not just to look

at deep fakes as dangerous

i believe that this kind of image

manipulation

can be used as a powerful tool for

creators

and i’m going to talk about some amazing

things that deep fix have managed to do

and why it’s important to encourage this

creativity

and not stifle it well deep fakes

give creatives the opportunity to reach

a much

larger audience with their art and

message

deep fakes can reduce language barriers

for creatives and artists

because deep fakes can mimic voices and

alter videos easily

it can be used in videos to make more

realistic dubbing

for different languages not only can the

translated voices

be more like the original actors voices

but it can also

alter the lip movement so the actor’s

voice looks more like the translated

dialogue

this would be revolutionary for the tv

and movie industry

as it means that they can reach a much

lower larger audience

an example of when this technique was

used is by a company called synesthesia

synesthesia used deep fake tech to

create an informative advert

where david beckham was talking about

malaria in nine different languages

this advert was able to reach nine times

the audience that it would before being

altered

and also communicated a very important

message

imagine having your favorite celebrity

being able to talk to you in your native

language

it would be such a great experience and

would make

these kind of adverts and movies more

personal

this tool can help smaller businesses

and creatives

reach a more global audience easily

without having to alter their original

creative vision

so not having large subtitles blocking

the screen

or having mismatched dubbing altering

the video

it can also help reduce costs as it

means that the team won’t have to spend

money on reshooting the video

to replace an actor with a different

foreign speaker

deep fakes can also help us engage with

our history in a more

creative and realistic way imagine going

to a museum and being able to talk to

albert einstein and learn about the

theory of relativity from him

well this kind of experience is possible

with deep fake tools

this was done in a museum in florida

where they created a deep fake

of salvador dali to greet the visitors

when they entered the museum

it had 125 different interactive videos

with 19 512 combinations

so every visitor could go home with

their own unique experience

when talking to dali this application of

deep fakes could really help more people

get more interested in art and history

and education

because they’re able to physically

interact with the past

and for a few minutes experience

immortality

maybe instead of so many rebooted films

which are happening these days

we can watch our dream cast on our

favorite movies just by deep fakes

it’s easy to see a new and up-and-coming

piece of highly

sophisticated technology as dangerous

as it’s the fear of the unknown and the

inability

to truly understand how sophisticated

these can get and that is very scary

but we have to remember that this type

of imitation

and manipulation of real life has always

been a part of art

this can be seen through lip syncing

celebrity impressions makeup artists

and most notably through the use of

masks

in ancient greece masks were used during

theater performances to communicate

strong emotions and let actors play

multiple parts in one play

in italy mars were used in carnivals to

hide their identity

and was seen as a glamorous display of

the mass maker’s ability

master also used in popular music such

as

daft punk and slipknot allowing the

artist to focus purely on their music

and not the performer we’re now in a

digital age where online behaviors

affect our everyday life

so deep fakes can be seen as the masks

of our generation

so the future of deep fakes is uncertain

but this progression in sophisticated

technology

really goes to show how innovative

creativity can be

from a simple face swapping algorithm we

have been able to create

unparalleled experiences such as talking

to history

reimagining popular videos and being

able to spread a message

to the whole world after this talk

if you guys go and look at deep fakes my

estimate is that 90

of the information you’ll read about

them will be negative

so i urge you to go and look at more

than just surface level

and try and learn about how deep fates

can be applied positively

to everyday life i hope now that you

have a little bit more information about

deep fakes

and that you’ll be able to do your own

investigations

and decide are they funny or threatening

thank you very much

you