Deepfake

Synthetic media created using AI to realistically depict someone saying or doing something they never actually did.

Deepfakes are AI-generated synthetic media—typically video or audio—that convincingly depict real people saying or doing things they never did.

How Deepfakes Work

Deepfakes use deep learning techniques, particularly generative adversarial networks (GANs) and autoencoders, to:

1. Learn facial features and expressions from source material
2. Map those features onto target footage
3. Generate realistic frame-by-frame replacements

Concerns

• Disinformation: Political manipulation and fake news
• Non-consensual content: Harassment and exploitation
• Fraud: Voice cloning for financial scams
• Erosion of trust: “Liar’s dividend”—real footage dismissed as fake

Detection

Researchers develop detection tools looking for artifacts like unnatural blinking, inconsistent lighting, or audio-visual mismatches. However, detection remains an arms race as generation improves.