By Debra Kaufman
Wikipedia defines deep fakes as a portmanteau of deep learning' and fake', and refers to videos in which celebrities and politicians are doing or saying things that are shocking, dangerous and just plain false. Using artificial intelligence, the creators of deep fakes are able to create/superimpose very convincing fake faces and even bodies onto source images and videos, and add very convincing speech and lip synching. One example is Jordan Peele's public service announcement about the menace of deep fakes. At HPA Tech Retreat, I convened a panel on Deep Fakes, with Department of Defense principal engineer Ed Grogan, HBO head of cybersecurity Marc Zorn and Video Gorilla's head of AI Oles Petriv, all of whom agreed that deep fakes pose a risk. Not just for the mischief they might cause to national and international politics, among other real-world perils, but for the media and entertainment companies that might inadvertently disseminate them.
Tools to manipulate images have become increasingly democratized, as has compute power. But successfully manipulating human faces, lip-synching and body motion was the sole purview of artificial intelligence researchers and other academics - until very recently. At the heart of deep fakes is GANs, which standards for generative adversarial networks. Based on Google's open source machine learning software TensorFlow, GANs are composed of two neural networks that teach each other to produce photoreal images.
The generative network generates images and the discriminative network evaluates them. Over time, the generative network spits out better images, and the discriminative network hones its ability to spot errors - all without human intervention.
Deep fakes first appeared in 2017 in the form of fake pornography on Reddit, contributed by a Reddit user dubbed Deepfakes; the Reddit community jumped in to fix bugs and improve the software. By January 2018, the free open-source FakeApp application launched - allowing almost anyone to create his or her own deep fakes. More tools followed, including one from UC Berkeley that lets anyone dance like a pro. The Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Germany rolled out a technique that allows one person to take control of another person's face to make it say anything. FaceSwap, DeepFaceLab, myFakeApp and LyreBird for voice synthesis are all widely available for free.
One expert in the field, who prefers to remain anonymous, noted the dilemma posed by deep fakes. Professionals will evaluate both the picture (or video) and compare it with the story it's trying to tell, he said. They'll look for other evidence to backup or refute what the image is saying, then draw their conclusions. It's important to note that the image could be real, but the story could be a fake - so we dispute the story. The image could be fake, so we just regard the image. And both could be fake. We look to multiple sources to derive the truth. But, he added, the general public through lack of knowledge, lack of time, or selective evaluation may accept what's presented and these people with incorrect information may still derive a conclusion that is detrimental to society and act on it. With the growth of fake news, deep fakes and web attacks, he concluded, how do you prove that some piece of media is real?
Many in the media and technology industries are worried and taking action. Facebook has stated that it has a machine-learning model to detect possibly fake videos and send them to human fact checkers for further review. But given that company's trouble with disseminating misinformation and hate speech, it's obviously a flawed model. The Wall Street Journal has spoken out (in print) about the threat, announcing that it created the WSJ Media Forensics Committee, an internal deepfakes task force led by the Ethics & Standards and the Research & Development team. The news outlet is also training reporters, developing newsroom guides and collaborating with Cornell Tech to identify ways technology can be used to combat this problem.
Some tool manufacturers are equally concerned. According to audio synthesis company Lyrebird cofounder/chief executive Alexandre de Brebisson, his company is exploring different directions including crypto-watermarking techniques, new communication protocols, as well developing partnerships with academia to work on security and authentication.
According to reports, the Department of Defense, through DARPA, created tools for identifying deep fakes Media Forensics, which automates existing forensic tools, is now looking at deep fakes, discovering subtle cues in current GAN-manipulated images and videos that allow us to detect the presence of alterations, says DARPA program manager Dr. Matthew Turek. A San Francisco-based startup, Unveiled Labs, has introduced Amber, an iOS app of patented tools for detecting all kinds of fakes. For more information, check out this Bloomberg reporter's take on deep fakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0 Jordan Peele
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLoI9hAX9dw&t=32s Bloomberg
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
By Debra Kaufman
