ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Manipulating videos to persuade an audience is nothing new, however, technology is making it harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. As of 2020, there are 100 million deep fake videos online. And the economic cost of disinformation is as high as 78 billion dollars a year. In July 2019, U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asked the CEO’s of Facebook, Twitter, and Google about their formal policies on deep fakes, or fake news, and how they plan to detect them. And unfortunately, few have responded.
They can be funny, disturbing, or down-right alarming. The term deep fake comes from deep-learning artificial intelligence which is what gives these videos their uncanny realism. The AI analyzes several different videos, learning someone’s mannerisms, facial structure, and voice. So, when debating real news versus fake news, always ask questions. Look for unusual URL’s or website names, weird lighting or missing shadows, audio that seems out of sync, and face discolorations or blurriness where the face meets the neck or hair.
Recognizing deep fakes is a part of what is called media literacy skills and they are becoming essential as 2020 has pushed so much of our culture and society into online environments. Kids may actually be the savviest of us all as they spend more time on social media using editing tools like snapchat filters and Facetune to create their own synthetic media, making them personally aware they can’t trust everything they see online.
Sources:
https://thesentinel.ai/report/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywyxex/deepfake-of-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-fake-video-policy
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/how-to-spot-fake-news-and-teach-kids-to-be-media-savvy
Contributor(s) to this news report include: Sabrina Broadbent, Producer; Bob Walko, Videographer and Editor.
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