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All About Deepfakes
The term “deepfake” is a combination of the words “deep learning” and “fake.” Deepfake technology effectively allows anyone to create hyper realistic pictures, videos, and even audio clips that make people appear to do or say things that they did not actually do or say.
In the year 2020, deepfakes of popular celebrities, politicians, and other icons took off, including convincing deepfakes of former President Barack Obama and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.
These deepfake videos are often created through a process called generative adversarial networking (GAN). The GAN procedure uses two separate neural networks with one model working to build the deepfake and the other model working to detect the counterfeit media. These models work iteratively against each other until the second model is no longer able to distinguish the deepfake media from the “real” media. At that point, it can be assumed that the deepfake will also be able to fool any human who might see it.
The GAN technique works especially well on aforementioned famous personalities since they can provide the most data for the neural networks to analyze. With so many recordings and footage on these people, GANs can create more realistic and accurate deepfakes.
Another method of media manipulation takes the form of “shallowfakes.” Unlike deepfakes however, shallowfakes…
