Deepfakes – What can you trust?

Before you continue, please take a minute and watch this great video of Obama giving a speech.

In the video, it is quite funny to see Obama giving a speech to the freshmen. But obviously, it is a Deepfake made by the professor in his spare time.

First, what is a Deepfake? Deepfakes use deep learning artificial intelligence to replace the likeness of one person with another in video and other digital media.

There are several methods for creating Deepfakes, but the most common relies on the use of deep neural networks involving autoencoders that employ a face-swapping technique. You first need a target video to use as the basis of the Deepfake and then a collection of video clips of the person you want to insert in the target. The videos can be completely unrelated.

This technology gets better at simulating reality day by day. Modern movie production can use Deepfakes to create characters in a different time, with a different look and in extreme cases resurrecting dead people like Paul Walker in the Fast and Furious. With a professional production budget, these scenes are largely indistinguishable from reality.

Many experts believe that, in the future, Deepfakes will become far more sophisticated as technology further develops and might introduce more serious threats to the public, relating to election interference, political tension, and additional criminal activity. Can you trust the video sent to you? Could be real, could also be fake.

If you want the see some crazy realistic Deepfake and be shocked in your future life, watch this video of Tom Cruise. After that, you will not trust any video anymore.