Two Minute Technology: Deepfakes


Two Minute Technology: Deepfakes

Earlier this year, a series of videos of Tom Cruise started to circulate on TikTok of the actor doing random and surprising stuff; goofing around, playing golf and showing off a few magic tricks. If you don't remember or haven't seen these videos before, I've included a short video compilation of them for you.

Despite the movie star hair and trademark cackle, this is not Tom Cruise. He never filmed these videos. What you just watched may seem like a doppelganger, is actually an example of a deepfake developed by AI and visual effects specialist Chris Umé and his stand-in actor Miles Fisher. While the act of creating fake content is not anything new, deepfakes leverages powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence.

What are Deepfakes?

Deepfakes are synthetic media in which a person in an already existing image or video is replaced with someone else's likeness; usually manipulated in a way to deceive people. As mentioned before, this portmanteau of the words "deep learning" and "fake," is a form of artificial intelligence that utilizes the technique of machine learning. Machine learning presents the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention. In short, it is when computers learn things from data.

What are deepfakes - and how can you spot them?

The use of deepfakes has made it even more difficult to decipher truth from fabrication in many sectors of the world. There have been many negative applications of deepfakes, being used to commit financial fraud, set up political figures and celebrities, creation of sockpuppets, spread misinformation, and much more. Concerns about fraud, misinformation, deterioration of credibility and authenticity is at an all time high as these negative implications become commonplace.

The Upside of Deepfake Technology

Although there are many more cases of deepfakes being used for deception, they are also used for positive innovations as well. For example, deepfake technology has been used by companies to create fun consumer applications, such as Zao and Faceswap that allows users to superimpose their faces on television and movie clips with a single picture. Corporate training videos can be created using deepfaked avatars and their voices. Companies like Synthesia, uses deepfake technology to create avatars to create personalized videos as well.


Message from the Blogger

Hello! Thank you for reading this blog post. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new today. See you next time!



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Minute Technology: Machine Learning

Image
Two Minute Technology: Machine Learning Any learning entity - be it an animal, human or a machine begins with an initial set of observations - raw data . This kind of data can stem from interactions, transactions, information exchange, examples, instructions or experiences. A brain - whether it belongs to a human or animal, tries to look for patterns inside that initial data and then uses it to perform actions or make decisions. This same phenomenon can be applied to machines, using machine learning. Machine learning is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence. According to Arthur Samuel, a computer scientist, machine learning gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Another computer scientist, Tom Mitchell, took the same details of machine learning, but broke it down further in his definition. I find Mitchell's definition more fitting to describe exactly what machine learning is. "Machine learning is a well-posed learning problem: a computer...
Read more

How apple has dominated the phone company

Image
  In the growth of smartphones in 2007  apple made basically the first touch screen held cell phone in which it was different from all of the others that was around. This tech guru Steve jobs knew at the time that he had something special. At this time he was competing with companies that were making flip phones, blackberries or even the slide up phones at the time. This was an outside the box move in which no one was doing at the time or even thought about doing.  Cell phones have come a long way back in the day before that they were carrying like bricks with them and you can tell it was a bad time. This mix of new styles of phones which basically turned the whole industry into touch screens and smartphones. This company lost their lead Steve jobs who was the man with the plan and stated this trend but the company has been able to continue to grow.  Many people don't know that the company made a bad deal with AT&T at the time. This deal was made to get all of t...
Read more

Ryan's Top Ten Albums - In Rainbows - Radiohead

Image
  In Rainbows - Radiohead Released 2007 - Genre: Art Rock, Experimental Rock While the albums I talked about in this blog are not ranked in any particular order, I can confidently say that this is my favorite album. Radiohead has always been one of my favorite bands, my original idea for this blog was to do an entry on each of their nine studio albums. In Rainbows came at a very unique point in the band’s career, as they had already seemingly reinvented the wheel twice, with the release of OK Computer in 1997, and Kid A in 2000, and their few albums since had been highly regarded but never to that same level. In Rainbows was their attempt at reinventing their sound again and doing something groundbreaking, and they delivered. The buildup to the album's release was very unique, as the band promoted the album almost solely on their own website, where they boasted a pay-what-you-want scheme for the album, where fans could pay any amount (or nothing at all) to download the album. I...
Read more