Deepfakes are videos that glue one person’s face to another’s body, creating the former it seems that they say or do something that they never actually did – even if it is something as innocent as Tom Cruise talking to the camera and hitting a golf ballThey’re hard to spot when you watch the video, but here’s the good news: you don’t actually have to watch the video to know you’ve encountered a deepfake.
The Tom Cruise deepfakes (a few short videos posted on TikTok on an account called deeptom cruise) were compelling because they applied Tom Cruise’s face to an actor who had already built a career as a Tom Cruise impersonatorThese videos are professionally produced and frankly, there was no way to tell them were deepfakes just looking at it. Do we have to worry? Do we now live in a world where everything can be faked?
I mean, yes, but we have been for years. Consider Photoshopped images for comparison. Of course, a bad one can be obvious. But normally we don’t look at photos to find out if they have been modified. Instead, we are just aware that it is quite common. Do you have to look on the cover of a celebrity magazine to know that the photo was probably altered? You do not.
The same goes for deepfakes: W.hat matters is the context of the video and where it came from, not the details of how the pixels move. An expert on videos used for activism Vice said that the bigger problem is that “We live in a world of many superficial fakes: simple, miscontextualized, or edited videos.”
So how can we spot fake videos without bending over every pixel? Mike Caulfield, a digital literacy expert, tweeted on this recently, sacrifice two frames for spotting fake something, and they work well for deepfakes.
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SIEVE
The first is SIFT, a concept he explains hereThere are four steps:
- Stop.
- Investigate the source.
- Find better coverage.
- Trace claims, citations and media back to the original context.
The first step can be applied as soon as you find yourself being sucked in, worried or wondering – or when you realize you’re spending a little too much time examine an image for telltale signs of deception
The rest of the steps are normalfeel questions that should have clear answers if the thing you are looking at is real. Caulfield pointed to an example of a fake reporter with a compelling-looking social media presence last year. Many details have been checked out. But the obvious sign of forgery? She said she wrote for Bloomberg, but no articles by her appear on Bloomberg’s website.
The five pillars
Another checklist for watching a video or photo is called the Five Pillars of Visual Verification, of the anti-disinformation organization First Draft.
As they say it:
The nice thing about education verification is that it is easy to break down. That’s because whether you’re looking at an eyewitness video, a photo manipulated, a sock puppet account, or a meme, the basic checks to run on it are the same:
Origin: Are you looking at the original account, article or piece of content?
Source: Who created the account or article or captured the original piece of content?
Date: When was it made?
Place: Where was the account created, the website created, or the piece of content captured?
Motivation: Why was the account created, the website created, or the piece of content recorded?
As with SIFT, you don’t have to zoom in on the video or image itself; instead, you zoom from to assess the context in the real world. Which not only gives you hints as to whether it is real, but also helps you think about why it exists and who will benefit if it is shared.
M.each of us, of course, already uses these techniquesSee for a perfect example this Lifehacker piece in which Nick Douglas explored the alleged trend of hipsters wearing small scarves around their ankles. The image was a photoshop, but the real sign was that if you follow the links (origin), you find that it comes from an Italian website (source) that publishes humor articles (motivation). It was never a real trend.
The SIFT and Pillars techniques work just as well for faked and mislabeled news images as they do for crazy stories about ankle scarves.Remember when we talked about it those ‘breaking news’ social media accounts spreading misinformationsometimes by accident, sometimes on purposeby linking it to current events?) Deep fakes and shallow fakes are there, and you can see them without any special training – just your own common sense, if you choose to use it.