{"id":8906,"date":"2021-08-02T08:01:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=8906"},"modified":"2021-08-02T08:01:06","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:01:06","slug":"the-factchecker-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/the-factchecker-18\/","title":{"rendered":"The FactChecker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Understanding How Deepfakes are Supercharging Fake News and Ways to Spot Them<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Mohammed Dahiru Lawal<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine not being able to trust what you hear or see when you watch a video online, a celebrity seen in a scandal that generates controversy but that celebrity was never actually in that video, a politician delivers a disastrous speech on the eve of an election but he never said those words, or a religious figure incites violence in a mammoth crowd but never was there in flesh. I am talking about Deep Fakes which are manipulated media; video, audio or both where someone\u2019s likeness is replaced with someone else\u2019s likeness, where people can be made to appear as if they have said or done something that never actually happened, but merely digital altering of contents.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This involves digitally altering media contents to show whatever the generator intends to display. The technology can create convincing but entirely fictional photos or videos from scratch and has already attained notoriety in places like the United States. For instance, a deepfake video<\/a> featuring the likeness of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stating that \u201cwhoever controls the data, controls the future\u201d surfaced on the Internet on the eve of United States Congressional hearings on Artificial Intelligence he was scheduled to attend at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a trend no doubt supercharges the spread of intentional falsehood as actual news designed to advance a malicious goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first deepfakes surfaced in 2017 when a Reddit user posted several pornographic videos with simulated celebrity faces. Since then, deep fakes have come a long way, with fewer and fewer training images or videos required for algorithms to generate believable versions of real people\u2019s faces. One expert predicts entirely realistic deep fakes could be possible in as little as six months<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here to continue reading<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact Checks of the week<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n