When Seeing Isn't Believing: The Deepfake Dilemma By Grace Cesarini

Deepfakes are artificially generated images, videos and audio generated to replicate someone and look convincingly real.

They are made with AI and create faces, voices, and even video footage, blurring the lines between what's real and what's not. They pose serious threats to individuals, organizations, and society as a whole, and create opportunities for misinformation, fraud, and emotional manipulation.

In 2023, the amount of deep fake content online surpassed 500,000 videos and voice files. As technology advances, it becomes easier and cheaper to create convincing deep fakes. 71% of people worldwide are unaware of what deepfakes are or fail to identify them. This major lack of awareness only heightens the risk of manipulation from this type of generated media.

Watch this video on deepfakes to learn more information...

Did this video shock you? This is just one example of how deceiving deepfakes can actually be.

Deepfake technology can also be used in scams. There are growing accounts of clone voices impersonating trusted individuals. They often use these voices to request money, personal information, or to endorse products.

“My grandpa, 90 years old, was targeted by one of these attacks. He lives alone and still manages a lot by himself. He received a call from an unknown number claiming to be my cousin, saying she got arrested and needed 5000 cash for bail. They told him not to tell anybody and to take the money out of his account and say it was for a roof repair. This is the only reason he even had a second thought about it. He called my dad, in a panicked state explaining what happened. My dad then called my cousin, who was in her apartment watching tv, not in jail. He made my grandpa immediately block that number and take no further action. Unfortunately, the voice on the other line sounded just like my cousin, and my grandpa was completely unaware something like this was even possible. How was he supposed to know?” -Grace Cesarini

The scammers often create a sense of panic by claiming the family member is in immediate danger, like being arrested and needing bail money. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to these scams due to the inability to determine these manipulated audios and their desire to help out loved ones with their disposable income.

Scams targeting individuals aged 60 and older caused over $3.4 billion in losses in 2023.

Educating yourself on how to physically identify deepfakes is very important…

Consider these steps from the MIT Media Lab:

Pay attention to the face. High-end DeepFake manipulations are almost always facial transformations.
Pay attention to the cheeks and forehead. Does the skin appear too smooth or too wrinkly?
Pay attention to the eyes and eyebrows. Do shadows appear in places that you would expect? DeepFakes may fail to fully represent the natural physics of a scene.
Pay attention to the glasses. Is there any glare? Is there too much glare? Does the angle of the glare change when the person moves?
Pay attention to the facial hair or lack thereof. Does this facial hair look real?
Pay attention to facial moles. Does the mole look real?
Pay attention to blinking. Does the person blink enough or too much?
Pay attention to the lip movements. Some deepfakes are based on lip syncing. Do the lip movements look natural?

These eight questions are intended to help guide people looking through DeepFakes. High-quality DeepFakes are not easy to discern, but with practice, people can build intuition for identifying what is fake and what is real.

If you're still not entirely confident, you can practice detecting the fake from the real on the website below.

Deep Fake Detection Practice

Consider this infographic from Task 8

There are other ways to determine if something is generated or not. As technology advances, it will become harder and harder to discern the deepfakes from real content.

Rely on trusted sources for your information. Fact-checking organizations and making sure news outlets are credible is a good way to authenticate suspicious content. Double check news stories if something feels remotely off or is emotionally charged.

You can also use AI Detection Tools. As AI evolves, so do the tools designed to detect AI-generated media. Organizations like McAfee and Keepnet Labs provide software that helps identify deepfakes and prevent them from causing harm.

According to a McAfee survey, 70 percent of people said they aren’t confident that they can tell the difference between a real and cloned voice. That said, 40 percent of people in the same study reported they would help if they got a voicemail from their spouse who needed assistance.

Deepfake pornography: It isn't talked about enough

The issue of deepfake pornography is growing and is becoming a major challenge for lawmakers. This specific technology places someone’s face —like a celebrity’s or even a regular person’s—onto explicit photos or videos without their consent.

It now takes less than 25 minutes and costs $0 to create a 60-second deepfake pornographic video of anyone using just one clear face image.

The problem is that current laws about revenge pornography don’t really cover deepfakes. For example, laws in states like Maryland require that the person shown in the video to have physically participated in creating the content and had an expectation of privacy that was violated. Since deepfakes are computer-generated and created without the victim’s knowledge, these laws don’t offer any protection for those targeted

Some states, like California, are trying to fix this by creating new laws that make it illegal to share deepfake pornography without permission. These laws also give victims the chance to take legal action. On a national level, there is a proposed law called the "Preventing Deepfakes of Intimate Images Act" that would make sharing deepfake pornography illegal and allow victims to take legal action.

The total number of deepfake videos online in 2023 is 95,820. 98% of those videos are deepfake pornography.

Unsurprisingly, 96% of pornographic deepfakes online are non-consensual.

Even with these new ideas, there are still big problems. The person who made the deepfake might live in another state or country, which makes it nearly impossible to punish them. On top of that, the penalties for creating deepfakes are often so small that there is not much pressure to stop it.

Overall, the rise of deepfake pornography is a serious problem that highlights the need for updated laws as technology advances. While states and the federal government are starting to take steps to address this issue, it’s clear that more work is needed to keep up with the ever-evolving technology and to protect individuals’ privacy and dignity online.

Are deepfakes are entirely bad?

No! Although deepfakes have many negatives and are often used maliciously, they can actually be helpful in a few ways.

In movies and TV, deepfake technology can reanimate actors who have passed away or are able to make actors look younger without spending tons and tons of money on special effects. For example, in Star Wars: Rogue One, they brought back the character “Grand Moff Tarkin” even though his actor had died years earlier.

In education, deepfakes can be used to make history come alive. It enables people to watch Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address or learn from a virtual teacher that looks and sounds real, which can make learning more exciting and fun.

The key to using deepfakes in a good way is making sure there are clear rules and that people are honest about how they’re using the technology. If used responsibly, deepfakes can be a tool for creativity, learning, and accessibility.

Sources:

https://www.fbi.gov - elder fraud

https://www.media.mit.edu - detecting deepfakes

https://www.security.org - statistics

https://www.spiralytics.com - statistics

https://www.avemarialaw.edu - deepfake pornography

https://www.forbes.com - deepfake positives

https://www.creativebloq.com - example from class

https://www.cnn.com - example from class