What is a "deepfake?" And how can I recognize images that have been created with generative AI?
Answer
Deepfakes are videos, audios, and photos that are made with AI but passed off as real. They can seem to show a real person doing or saying something that never actually happened, by faking their voice, or putting their face on someone else's body, or even just changing the motion of their lips. Like bad photoshop jobs, there can be some tell-tale signs that an image or video has been altered: super-smoothed skin, weird shadows, unnatural blinking. But if you have a good user and an advanced program, those tells can disappear. Not even programs designed to catch deepfakes are 100% reliable. This is why it's important to check where the video was coming from, and and look for independent accounts of the same scene. Read more about deepfakes in this short paper by AI for Education.