Deepfakes and Misinformation: What Can YOU Do?
A couple of years ago, deepfakes were taking the internet by storm. Nowadays, you can deep-fake an entire video with nothing more than a mobile app, and it can be hard to differentiate the real from the fake!
Tech companies like Descript have broken into deep-faking voices with products like Overdub. According to Jay LeBoeuf of Descript, Overdub only needs to hear you speak a few sentences to be able to produce any sentence in your voice!
Concerns have been raised about the potential for nefarious use of this technology. In recognizing this, Descript has issued an Ethics Statement. Comedian Jordan Peele addresses some of these concerns head-on in this deep-faked PSA from Former President Barack Obama:
Deepfakes have been used to encourage the spread of fake news, slander political opponents, and even incite military coups!
As the technology to create deepfakes improves exponentially, our ability to spot and detect these deepfakes falls further behind. Even Descript admits that “it’s unclear” how to detect deepfakes. That said, social media companies and governments are doing what they can to combat these fakes and their associated spread of misinformation. Still, all of these bans and legislation are dependent on an ability to detect these deepfakes!
In his article “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”, Langdon Winner is optimistic when he says that society has a “choice about whether or not to adopt [technology]” based on its potential consequences. But seeing as how easily accessible this deepfake technology is, it appears that we have already adopted it. Even if we limited public access to this tech, there will always be someone continuing to use it for malintent.
Now that we have — for better or worse — integrated this technology with society, Winner says that our “social life [must adapt]” to accommodate these consequences. As such, it’s left to us — the users of the internet — to spot these deepfakes and do our best to slow their spread.
Some general advice is to be cautious online and verify information before believing or sharing it. For example, this can look like making sure videos are from a reputable source before sharing, making sure the person you’re speaking to on the other end of a phone call is actually who they claim to be, and when something on the web strikes you as unbelievable, considering that it may be falsified.
