Deep Fakes

By Daniel Santiago

Deep fakes are edited videos or images in which a person from an existing image or video is replaced with someone else. Deep fakes are a form of misinformation that are often used with other forms. They have caused many changes on the internet and in real life.

For example, deep fakes have shifted politics and made people go from one side to the other. In Gabon, a deep fake video surfaced of the missing president, Ali Bongo which at first made everyone believe he was alive he had suffered a stroke and died. This led some to attempt to take over the government, and others to mourn him. (MIT Technology Review: The biggest threat of deep fakes is not deep fakes themselves)

In the United States, on a sketch of The Tonight Show in 2016, Jimmy Fallon dressed up as Donald Trump and created a sketch discussing at-the-time current politics. Three years after the initial sketch, a deep fake was made of Donald Trump saying the audio. That deep fake fooled people who did not know the original context. (The rise of deep fakes and the threat to democracy)

Deep fakes are extremely hard to tell from live videos, and often require experts to do so. The process of making a deep fake is like modeling a latex face and transferring it to another person. Software like DeepFaceLab has been created that makes the creation of deep fakes easier, though there are still ways to spot one, these include lack of blinking, erratic movements, or a distorted background. Deep fakes can trick people or organizations like the government. This is the bad side of deep fakes.

Finally, big names on TV also want to get their hands on these technologies. Video and film producers use deep fakes to make actors look younger. An example is Lucas Films DE ageing Mark Hamil in The Mandalorian using deep fake technology. On social media, regular people also use deep fake tools to impersonate celebrities on sites like TikTok.(Tom Cruise on Tiktok)

Though making deep fakes sounds fun, they can lead to terrible things like making leaders and important people seem to say things they did not, creating all kinds of problems including ruining elections. Deep fakes can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands.