Ross: The threat of deepfake news and how to beat it

The next step in mass deception is what’s being called the “deepfake.”

Now that we’re all on to the Russian troll factories, hackers have a new tool to mess with our minds. You’ve probably seen that video of Barack Obama making a statement he never made. It was designed to demonstrate how effectively a program called deepfake can mimic anyone’s voice and face, so that you’d swear that person actually said something he never did.

According to Wired Magazine, there actually are ways to detect the fakery in these videos. They still don’t get the eye blinks quite right – since they’re based on published images which almost always show the eyes open. And breathing might also be off.  But these are really subtle defects, which are already being corrected.

And the truly insidious thing is that even if a video isn’t fake, knowing that realistic fakery is even possible leaves room to create doubt about what’s true.

Putting us right back to where we were before this explosion of news and fake news sources.

You will hear and see a lot of things, but unless you are hearing and seeing them in person, you are going to have to trust the word of someone who did witness them in person. We call those people “reporters.”

And the more powerful the software gets, the more important they become.

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