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