[imagesource: MBN News]

Deepfakes are here to stay, and it looks as though their usage will only become more widespread in the near future.

Sure, it’s all fun and games on TikTok with a fake Tom Cruise, but there are obviously far more devious ways in which this technology can be deployed.

For example, South Korean news channel MBN has already taken the rather extraordinary step of using a deepfake of regular news anchor Kim Joo-Ha during a broadcast last September.

Viewers were informed that this would happen prior to the broadcast, but for misinformation peddlers looking to spread fake news, for example, using a deepfake of a recognisable public figure could prove effective.

Here’s part of the broadcast from MBN, with the computer-generated Kim Joo-Ha talking viewers through the day’s top stories:

As the BBC reports, this wasn’t a once-off event, with MBN stating that it would continue to use the deepfake for some breaking news reports.

Deborah Johnson, professor of applied ethics, emeritus, at the University of Virginia, says we are entering very murky waters:

“Deepfakes are part of the larger problem of misinformation that undermines trust in institutions and in visual experience – we can no longer trust what we see and hear online.

“Labelling is probably the simplest and most important counter to deepfakes – if viewers are aware that what they are viewing has been fabricated, they are less likely to be deceived.”

Deepfakes do, for the most part, carry negative connotations, and some within the industry say that malicious deepfakes are holding back investment in the technology’s legitimate, commercial use.

Victor Riparbelli, the cofounder of Synthesia, a UK firm that creates AI-powered corporate training videos, calls it “the future of content creation”:

“Let’s say you have 3,000 warehouse workers in North America,” he says. “Some of them speak English, but some may be more familiar with Spanish.

“If you have to communicate complex information to them, a four-page PDF is not a great way. It would be much better to do a two or three-minute video, in English and Spanish.

“If you had to record every single one of those videos, that’s a massive piece of work. Now we can do that for [little] production costs, and whatever time it’ll take someone to write the script. That pretty much exemplifies how the technology is used today.”

Ultimately, it’s in the interest of these companies to root out the bad apples, and to highlight areas where the tech can be used for good.

As an example, the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation uses the tech to bring to life the stories of more than 55 000 Holocaust survivors, which could one day “enable grandchildren to have conversations with AI versions of deceased elderly relatives”.

Perhaps in due course, we will see fewer celebrity deepfakes, and a rise in the legitimate use of technology with immense potential.

We can only hope.

[source:bbc]