Deepfake, An Era of Post Truth

I really have no way of knowing if Fredrich Nietzsche was able to envision the world of today, but he was the first to use the term ‘Post Truth’. He wasn’t challenging the perceived truth, rather the motivation, aim or belief behind it. The ‘purpose’ behind what is accepted as truth.

Scientists today relate this term to Deepfake technology which challenges the very fabric of the truth in a society and consider that we have finally stepped into a Post Truth era!

Digital media including social media is deepfake’s alley and major proponent. Unfortunately, it does not help when politicians, whatever their motivation, advocate their mistrust in mainstream media. It is in human nature to become easily suspicious, and people forget that mainstream media is responsible and can be held accountable. Social media is like a wild horse, with an open for all access. It offers free rides to deepfakes who execute well-planned distortion of truths, usually striking unsuspecting victims.

Shape-shifting Deepfakes

Deepfakes are all those sneaky shape-shifting media which distort the truth, produce synthetic (fake) media sometimes in the form of images, sometimes only audio and many times videos.

Recently the face of Taylor Swift was planted on AI generated porn. It went viral on social media and was tough to take down. It is becoming easier and easier for anyone to make deepfakes due to its easy availability and low cost. Hence not only is it causing headaches for celebrities and politicians, but common people are also not spared. In fact, according to a study 93 percent of deepfakes are found to be used to make porn exploiting faces of innocent women and children, usually without their consent or knowledge.

Have you ever thought where it all is being sold? Looking at the percentage surely there is a huge market for it, somewhere!

More recently deepfakes of Rishi Sunak and President Biden were floated to disseminate disinformation on separate issues.

There is an entire system behind it, fake social media accounts held by bots, like, share, comment and promote the deepfakes. Innocent people fall prey into believing its authenticity and share it forward. The lie becomes viral, the damage is done.

Deepfakes can be used by countries to effect regime change in another country as well. It can be deemed unethical but not unsurprising.

Deepfake technologies can produce new imaginary people, and it can also develop deepfakes of deceased people much to the horror and agony of the families involved!

Artists or musicians are also easy targets. The body of one artist is used with the voice of another and circulated in the social media promoting false stories and destroying careers and probably complete lives.

Then, imagine if there is a lawsuit filed against an innocent person because he is projected as a criminal in a deepfake, it will be extremely difficult for them to prove innocence and in any case due to the length of the legal process their career might get destroyed, leave alone the personal shame and societal boycott despite being the victim.

Internet is flooded with thousands of such tragic stories caused by deepfakes.

Coming to voice, have you ever received phone calls where no one speaks on the other end, and you keep ‘asking who it is’? Don’t ever utter a word or syllable to such calls. They are in all probability fake calls collecting your voice data. This can be used against you anytime in the future. Your family or company can be tricked into transferring huge amounts of money if a video or audio is made convincing them that it is ‘you’ who is asking them to make the transfer. It has already happened to some high officials in few organizations, where they have received phone calls from their CEO’s asking them to immediately release funds to particular accounts. Later, it was discovered that the CEO’s had never called them, but it was an absolute convincing deepfake copy of their original voice which had made the fraudulent call!  This led to the loss of millions to those companies. 

Think then, if you suddenly get a call from your parent or child asking for urgent assistance, how likely are you to panic and rush to help them? The only catch is it never is any of them on the other side!

The good Deepfake

Now here is the thing, I am not saying Deepfake is all bad and must be immediately banned. Firstly, its near impossible to stop this technology. Secondly, it does have great use cases too such as generating humor or satire, generating movie sets at much lower costs, for special effects, detecting ailments and finding solutions, providing personalised advertising, and in gaming and metaverse. This list goes on. However, it is imperative that despite the benefits of deepfake technology it still needs to be used with much caution, tremendous responsibility and absolute accountability.

The challenge

This is easier said than done. For first there are no general laws governing its use. Deepfake tech falls in a grey area of law where it can squeeze out of legal bindings in many forms.

The challenge is global and who decides what is the correct use?

Will it be possible to bring ideologically opposing countries to agree on fair practices? Can this easily polarized world come on the same page to determine the justified and unjustified uses of deepfake? We come back to Nietzsche’s problem with the truth.

Whose truth is right? Or rather who has the right to the truth and why.

Technology today is border less, its all-pervasive and expansive, it is however neither restrictive nor expensive!

We are dealing with a growing super intelligence which works on an adversarial model, where Generative adversarial Networks (GAN) work in such a way, that while one side of the network G(x) generates deepfake and the other side of the network D(x) tries to detect the deepfake. This exercise is repeated until a perfect deepfake is created. When it is released to the public it is near impossible to catch it. It even slips through controls set up by social media platforms. By the time it is traced, it is usually too late.

Authorities have suggested mandatory watermarking or need to declare it as a deepfake. But where will the disclaimer be released and what if countries decide to defy? We come back to ground zero.

However, work is being done to form laws locally at least if not globally especially in America and Europe.

India too is taking this threat seriously and while we might not have laws specifically on deepfake we can challenge the use of this technology using the existing laws such as - GDPR, copyright laws that can be used for challenging deepfakes for authenticity, defamation laws can be used by anyone whose identity has been demeaned using their deepfakes, privacy laws for challenging deepfakes made without consent of people, identity theft laws can be used by people whose identity has been stolen for making deepfakes, and cyber-crime laws can be used for instances crimes like phishing, fraud and extortion.

Recently in India a renowned and highly respected journalist filed a PIL (Public Litigation case) in the High Court of Delhi when his deepfake was used in a video and circulated in the social media.

Despite it all, it is still difficult to pinpoint and catch the culprits easily and punish them.

Self-Protection

So, what do we do while the governments place concrete laws to protect us from deepfakes? There are four basic things which come to my mind which we can do. First, we need to diligently follow the principle of ZERO TRUST and do our due diligence before believing anything. Secondly, remaining informed and aware of the nature and number of frauds and deepfakes happening around you. Thirdly, we need to make and keep a secret code or keyword to be shared with our families in case of an emergency. Lastly, we need to limit sharing our personal information on the social media as much as possible.

There is a fifth safety measure too which you can take. Spread the awareness, like mentioned above, information is the key to awareness which in turn can keep everyone alert and secure.

Last but not the least

The threat of deepfakes is no joke, it is very real and present. Some laws are in place, but the question remains if they are enough to protect us. The culprits can often make use of grey areas of laws and go away scot-free despite the loss and harm they cause to others. Also, while the technology is a powerful tool to enhance human life, but if it falls in the wrong hands, we cannot even imagine the level of destruction it can cause!

They only way to live securely in this era of Post Truth is the art to be able to form an attitude of discernment and the ability to wade through the untruths until you can arrive at the truth, without any layer of doubt. Remember the mantra of ZERO TRUST, it’s not optional and once practiced in large numbers might bring about the natural demise to the misinformation caused by the likes of deepfake.

Shalini Verma is a tech entrepreneur. 

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