Deepfakes: Trick Or Treat? By Kietzmann, J., Lee, L. W., McC

Deepfakes: Trick or Treat? By: Kietzmann, J., Lee, L.W., McCarthy, I.P. and Kietzmann, T.C. In the journal: Business Horizons. The authors Jan H. Kietzmann Ian P.

Deepfakes leverage powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence to manipulate or generate visual and audio content with a high potential to deceive. The phenomenon gained attention when a user on Reddit, known as “deepfakes,” shared the first instances of celebrity face swaps in adult videos, sparking widespread interest and concern. Deepfakes use sophisticated AI techniques to create highly realistic yet fabricated images and sounds, posing significant challenges and risks to society and individual privacy.

Understanding deepfakes requires insight into their technological foundations. Many deepfakes are created through a process involving deep neural networks, specifically autoencoders, which are trained to recognize and reproduce facial features. These autoencoders consist of an encoder, a latent space, and a decoder. The encoder compresses the facial image into a set of measurements, capturing essential features like eye openness, head pose, and emotional expression. This compressed data, stored in the latent space, allows the model to generate or recreate faces with remarkable accuracy. The decoder then reconstructs the face, and by sharing the encoder across multiple networks, creators can align the latent spaces of different individuals, facilitating face swapping and other manipulations.

Deepfakes can be classified into various types—photo, audio, and video deepfakes—each with distinct applications and implications. Photo deepfakes include face and body swapping, enabling individuals to alter appearances or place themselves into various scenarios for entertainment or marketing, such as virtual try-ons. Audio deepfakes involve voice swapping or speech synthesis, which can be used maliciously to impersonate voices in fraud or harassment or beneficially to automate voiceovers and narration. Video deepfakes encompass face swapping, face morphing, and full-body puppetry, allowing for realistic impersonations and scene recreations, which have profound effects on media authenticity, advertising, and entertainment industries.

The proliferation of deepfakes presents numerous ethical and security concerns. They threaten the authenticity of information, impacting trust in audiovisual media. To address these challenges, the R.E.A.L. framework provides a strategic approach: Record, Expose, Advocate, and Leverage. Recording involves establishing verifiable evidence to confirm authenticity; exposing entails developing technological detection tools, such as those supported by DARPA and media forensics programs, which can identify signs of manipulation; advocating involves enacting legal measures to penalize malicious deepfake creation and distribution, as seen in China’s legal reforms; and leveraging emphasizes strengthening trust in credible brands and institutions, encouraging critical consumption of content.

The battle against malicious deepfakes is ongoing, with advancements in detection technologies supplementing legal and ethical efforts. While deepfakes possess the potential for abuse, they also offer opportunities for innovative applications in entertainment, education, and marketing. For instance, deepfakes can be used for personalized learning experiences or special effects in filmmaking. However, the rapid development of this technology necessitates a comprehensive approach that combines technological, legal, and societal strategies to safeguard individual rights and uphold trust in digital media.

In conclusion, deepfakes are a double-edged sword—capable of both benign innovation and malicious manipulation. As AI and machine learning techniques continue to evolve, it is imperative for individuals, organizations, and policymakers to remain vigilant and proactive. Strengthening detection capabilities, establishing clear legal frameworks, and fostering an informed and skeptical media literacy among the public are essential steps toward mitigating the dark side of deepfakes while exploring their constructive potential.

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