With great technology, comes bigger risk. This just got proven when a deepfake video of a celebrity actress named Rashmika Mandanna surfaced on the internet and made people question how safe we are in this corrupt cyber world. People were earlier made fools with the help of technology, were robbed, OTP scams, and much more. Now the recent incident of the actress, whose face was swiped by someone who was wearing explicit clothes surfaced the internet and made a buzz. But what is this deepfake technology all about? Here is everything you must know.
What is Deepfake technology?
Deepfake is the new photoshopping tool of the 21st century. This is done with the help of artificial intelligence called deep learning which creates images of fake events and transforms the existing source content by swapped to another person.
Butis is one of the negatively downsided platforms which is constantly evolving in the field of artificial intelligence. The platform is operated by a set of cyber criminals who are capable of altering voices and mimicking someone else. Also, this platform has been creating a lot of manipulated videos to make them appear genuine.
Recently, this cybercriminal used Rashmika Mandan, a South Indian actress’s face on Zara Patel, a British-Indian girl’s body. This deep fake video made the whole of Bollywood react to cybercrime, and even Amitabh Bachchan reacted to this deepfake.
When was it first discovered? What did it do?
It was first discovered in 2017 on Reddit, where Deepfake swapped the faces of celebrities like Gal Gadot, Scarlett Johansson, Taylor Swift and more- for creating the porn clip. The face-changing was done with the help of a machine which used deep learning algorithms. That algorithm was used to scan through thousands of face shots by using an AI algorithm which was called an encoder.
What is an encoder?
The ‘encoder’ enables the machines to learn similarities between the two faces as well as reduce them to their shared common features, by compressing the photos.
Then, with the help of an encoder the wrong images are overlapped to feed the wrong photo to the source and another algorithm which is called the decoder reconstructs the face with the orientation and expressions.
What does the Deepfake technology do to the original videos and photos?
The Deepfake changes and modulates the voices and faces of the characters in different kinds of videos- mostly obscene.
Deepfakes usage?
Mostly deepfake technology is used for unpleasant edition usage- like pornographic video content in nature. But to take back to the time, during elections, there were clips of politicians which were digitally altered and were circulated with falsely attributed statements.
Majorly those who are famous, or have a face value have been a victim of deepfake video. Even Barack Obama, the former US President was pulled in with the fake video created by deepfake which saw Mr Obama call Donald Trump a complete dipshit. The video was widely circulated.
Not only this, but Meta’s chief Mark Zuckerberg was witnessed claiming to have ‘total control of billions of people's stolen data’ in different and similar videos.
An AI firm named Deeptrace was also discovered, with 15,000 deepfake videos in September 2019.
What do the experts have to say about the deepfake creators?
An expert from Boston University, named Danielle Citron, who is a professor of law also raised serious concerns about the growing negative usage of technology.
He said to The Guardian that Deepfake technology has been weaponising against women. Now when the case of the actress Rashmika surfaced, the question arises about safety all over again.
What else can deepfake do besides making videos?
Deepfake does not just create AI-driven videos, but it can also create all-new fictional photos from scratch. They can also create fake profiles and characters by using fictional names and videos.
Who is making deepfake videos at present?
As per the report by The Guardian, it is said that anyone from industrial and academic researchers to amateur enthusiasts, can create a video. Also, the visual effects studios and porn producers can use the technology for manipulating and creating content.
