Uncovering Visual Deepfakes
Deepfake technology is often used to convincingly replace someone’s likeness in a photo or video. With the rise of deepfakes putting words in the mouths of politicians and celebrities, several software tools have emerged to combat such visual trickery.
In 2020, ahead of the US elections, Microsoft created a video authenticator tool that can analyse still photos or videos to detect whether it has been manipulated. It is able to find the edges of the deepfake and subtle grayscale elements that are undetectable to the human eye, and provides a confidence score in real time.
Using the Algorithm
The Factual is an algorithm-driven news rating company recently acquired by Yahoo. It helps readers make informed choices on news sources, including Yahoo’s news pieces as well as content from its publishing partners.
It uses four criteria to judge how informative a piece is:
- Site quality
- Expertise of author
- Quality and diversity of sources
- Tone of article
The algorithm then awards a score (1-100) for each criterion depending on how the piece fares in each category.
Detecting Audio Deepfakes
Audio deepfakes replicate or imitate someone’s voice in audio samples. Used positively, this tech can be used for audiobook narration to match an author’s voice. However, it can also be maliciously used for scam calls and cyberattacks that bypass voice recognition authentication.