DEEPFAKESHow Deepfakes Are Being Used
Digital tools can alter images of ourselves and others in ways that are more convincing and harder to detect than ever before. They can create spectacular special effects in movies. But they also are used with the images or voices of people without their consent, or to create propaganda with the intent to fool people.
Digital tools can alter images of ourselves and others in ways that are more convincing and harder to detect than ever before. They can create spectacular special effects in movies. But they also are used with the images or voices of people without their consent, or to create propaganda with the intent to fool people. Mary Ton is a University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign professor and the digital humanities librarian for the University Library, and her expertise includes the use of artificial intelligence in the humanities. She talked with News Bureau arts and humanities editor Jodi Heckel about the use of deepfakes.
What exactly are deepfakes, and how are they created?
Deepfakes get their name from deep learning, a method in computer science that’s used to study patterns in large quantities of images, sound and video. These patterns are represented through mathematical equations that are so complex that they resemble the dense networks of neurons in the human brain, making these algorithms artificially intelligent. When given images of humans, computers look for patterns in pixels, the basic building blocks of a digital image. For sound, computers transform sound waves into visual representations, then use image recognition techniques to identify patterns in much the same way that they approach pictures. Deepfakes apply what they’ve learned about how humans look and sound to create new arrangements of pixels that mimic the human face and voice.
Manipulating images is nothing new. From the highly stylized statues of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten to chemically altered Victorian photos of women’s waistlines, we’ve been using visual representations to project our ideal selves. Digital technologies introduce an unprecedented level of sophistication into these idealized images, making it difficult to determine how much an image has been modified.
How are deepfakes used in positive and sinister ways in the entertainment industry?
At their best, deepfakes help us communicate. If you’ve watched “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” you’ve seen how special effects artists can use deepfakes to digitally de-age actors, and Ryan Reynold’s beefy doppelganger in “Free Guy” is a hilarious example of how they can superimpose the head of one actor onto the body of another.
