Deepfake Pros and cons overview

1. PROS AND CONS: DEEPFAKE TECHNOLOGY AND AI
AVATARS
While the negative effects of deepfakes are easy and frightening to imagine, there are also
some advantages to using the technology for productive purposes.
Deepfake technology was originally developed out of the work of computer scientist
Ian Goodfellow and is a by-product of Goodfellow’s work on generative adversarial
networks (GANs). GANs generate convincing images using an algorithm in which
two GANs try to ‘fool’ each other into thinking an image is ‘real’. Today, GANs can
convincingly recreate a person using just a single video clip of that person (read more
about GANs here).
If you want to be scared, or possibly astounded, watch this video from Ctrl Shift Face.
It shows comedian Bill Hader on a talk show, telling a story about meeting Tom
Cruise and Seth Rogen. Watch carefully – when Hader gives his impressions of
Cruise and Rogen, those actors’ faces seamlessly melt into his own.
At the moment, the technology can only stretch to superimposing one face onto
another, but a future is fast approaching when GANs will be able to recreate an entire
person – convincingly enough to fool anyone. Yet, while the cons of deepfakes are
easy and frightening to imagine, there are also advantages to the technology.
So, what are the pros and cons of deepfake technology?
Deepfakes: Cons
Trust
Let’s start with the easy one. It is not hard to think of reasons to be terrified of a
technology that can potentially make anyone appear to be doing or saying anything.
Imagine you are watching the nightly news and you see a press conference of the
Prime Minister inciting violence. But the whole thing was a deepfake. The PM could
deny it, but how do you know that is not a deepfake, too. How can you know what to
believe?
In 2017, researchers at the University of Washington shined a light on the potential
pitfalls of generative technology when they released a paper describing how they
had created a fake video of President Barack Obama. Google’s chief executive, Mark
Zuckerberg, has also been the target of a deepfake video that appeared to show him
credit a secretive organisation for the success of the social network.

2. More recently, a website called Deepnudes was proposed, which would allow users
to superimpose anyone’s head onto pornographic content. Although the site’s launch
was cancelled, the technology is now out there.
Scamming
Another area of concern is financial scams. Audio deepfakes have already been
used to clone voices and convince people they are talking to someone trusted and
defraud them. Earlier this year, scammers used a deepfake of a tech CEOs voice to
try and convince an employee at the company to transfer money to the scammer’s
account. And this is not the first time: last year, scammers using the exact same trick
managed to defraud a company out of $240,000.
While everyone, from DARPA to the FBI on down, are working on ways to identify
and defeat deepfakes, or legislate against them, it may already be too late. That’s
because the biggest problem with deepfakes is that they corrode our trust in
technology – our trust in the news on TV and video, our trust in clips on the Internet,
our trust in live-streamed events, and even, our trust in our own eyes.
So, against this seemingly doom-laden scenario, what pros could there possibly be
to this technology? Surprisingly, quite a few.
Deepfakes: Pros
Art
Star Wars fans are likely aware of the use of deepfake tech to bring the actor Peter
Cushing back to “life” for 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, but the technology
could also allow a host of other useful arts applications. These include being able to
go back and change the dialogue in a video or movie without the need for a reshoot
and creating entire videos just by selecting from a menu of presenters and entering
the script.
Last year, a UK-based charity used deepfake technology to create a video of David
Beckham delivering an anti-malaria message in nine languages. And advertising
company WPP created corporate training videos that used AI to create a presenter
that could speak the recipient’s language and address them by name.
Researchers in Moscow have used the technology to bring the Mona Lisa to life,
creating a video where she moves her eyes, head and mouth. And although
deepfake tech represents a serious challenge to the fight against fake news, it has
also been used to create presenter-led news reports tailored to individual viewers.

3. Professional training
Deepfake technology can be used to create AI avatars for use in training
videos. Startups like London-based Synthesia have been getting more attention from
the corporate world during the COVID pandemic since lockdowns and health
concerns have made video shoots involving real people much more difficult to pull
off.
Research
Outside the fields of entertainment and training, deepfake tech can also be used to
create personal avatars. These can then be used in apps that allow people to try on
clothes or new hairstyles at home, or in training applications in a number of
professions.
One of these is medicine, where generative technology is already being used to
create “fake” brain scans based on actual patient data. These fake scans are then
used to train algorithms to spot tumours in real images.
Identity protection
Perhaps more crucially, AI-generated avatars have been used to protect the identity
of interviewees in news reports about the persecution of LGBTQ people in Russia.
Financial saving
Others point out that generative technology could potentially democratise a number
of industries. By allowing the cheap creation of everything from videos, to
advertisement and games, generative technology could allow individuals and
companies to enter these fields with less investment.
It may be that it is less the technology that is dangerous, than the potential use it is
put to. If companies and individuals using deepfake technology can be held to high
ethical standards and if harmful uses of the tech can be successfully prevented, then
this technology could hold a lot of promise.