The Rising Dangers of Deep Fakes in 2023
Artificial Intelligence has the ability to destroy anyone's life
Deep Fakes have become increasingly complex over the last few years to distinguish between what is real and what is not with the help of Artificial Intelligence. During an information war, Deep Fake Technology can be used to mislead and confuse millions of people. Not only can this sort of technology be applied on a large-scale psychological warfare level, but it can also be applied on a personal level to destroy one’s career, marriage, or reputation. With Deep Fakes becoming more sophisticated, clever minds will need to step forward with solutions to the ever-growing threat that Artificial Intelligence has created.
So what exactly is a Deep Fake?
Deep Fake - an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.
Below is an obvious example of an A.I.-generated Deep fake video of Barack Obama to bring everyone to an understanding of the technology’s influence and power.
If you had no idea what a Deep Fake was, now you do, and it should be pretty alarming that Artificial Intelligence can provide this sort of power, which in the wrong hands, can be detrimental.
But how does the technology work?
Deep Fakes are forgeries resulting from an ML (machine learning) process. Machine Learning is a form of artificial intelligence in which computer algorithms learn from data to form predictive models.
The concept is to create a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) where two or more ML systems called 'Neural Networks' are trained to compete with one another. A Neural Network is a series of algorithms that endeavors to recognize underlying relationships in a data set through a process that mimics how the human brain operates. In this sense, neural networks refer to systems of neurons, either organic or artificial in nature.
Generally, the first network is called a ‘Generator’ and is programmed to create fake images, videos, or audio recordings. The Generator remains the baseline in this Neural Network and makes corrections according to the competing Artificial intelligence.
The second network is known as the 'Discriminator,'’ designed to challenge fake images, videos, or audio recordings provided by the Generator.
Often, the Generator and the Discriminator will compete thousands, if not millions, of times against the original content provided by the Generator until the Discriminator can no longer find discrepancies.
If Artificial Intelligence can no longer identify whether an image, video, or audio recording is authentic, how do you expect to?
Media Outlets and Governments already possess this technology to mislead civilians of all kinds around the world.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence, corrupt Governments can create scenarios to justify wars. Politicians can be blackmailed into voting for such a war because of Artificial Intelligence. Generated content may end their careers. With the help of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Fakes, Governments Worldwide can influence their citizens' minds to demand that those wars occur, even if Artificial Intelligence has generated propaganda.
The damage to society risk is severe, but what if this hit a little closer to home?
Here’s an example.
With over 4 billion unique Internet users, the chances you have uploaded a photo or video of yourself or a loved one to the internet is very probable. This means that a Generator can use your photos/videos/audio recordings to create forgeries of yourself, without your knowledge or consent.
An experiment titled “John: A Social Media Case Study” showed that Artificial Intelligence only needed 7 photos to create forgeries.
John is not a real person.
The forgeries that the Artificial Intelligence can create are endless. Here is an example of Artificial Intelligence creating Deep Fakes of John in different scenarios, such as an extremist (which he is not), as a clown who likes to party on the weekends (which has never happened,) a convict (whom has never been in trouble with the law,) and even place John in a situation to appear like he is cheating on his wife (no, this is not his wife either.)
“John was able to use a free service called Stable Diffusion and a technique called Dreambooth to teach AI how to create images of John in any style. While our John is not real, someone could reproduce similar results with five or more images of any person. They could be pulled from a social media account or even taken as still frames from a video.”
The Department of Homeland Security wrote about “Increasing Threat of Fake Identities” in 2018.
There are many different programs that can create Deep Fakes, such as DALLE and Lensa AI (which is available for iOS download.)
In particular, Lensa AI has been exploited by users to create soft porn. Users can create a living hell for a young woman by having a smart phone, the Lensa App, and a few extra dollars. The Artificial Intelligence generated images can then be used as blackmail against a victim.
The FBI warned of new way innocent teens are sextorted by deep fake pictures just under a month ago.
Deep Fakes also serve a significant threat to the economy in many different aspects. Graphic Designers will not be needed if the Artificial Intelligence can perform the task quicker, cheaper and more efficiently. Why wouldn’t this technology take over the work of an architect, or a news network? Perhaps a Government would like the price of oil to rise or fall, it would be as simple as having Artificial Intelligence generate a baseline scenario, and allow the Discriminator to challenge the original scenario a few million times to create a perceived reality.
Deep Fakes are an instrumental weapon in 5th Generation Warfare.
Deep Fake Technology is obscenely dangerous.
The rising dangers of Deep Fakes can no longer be ignored, over the last 5 years the technology has advanced tremendously. The risks for Government and Media Outlets to misuse this technology, to weaponize it against the general public with an injected, false narrative is simply too easy to accomplish. Imagine yourself, without your family or your job because you are a victim of Artificial Intelligence placing you at the ‘scene of the crime.’ Imagine your child being blackmailed by sexualizing images by truly sick people because they had the correct phone app and a few extra dollars on them.
The damaging effects of Deep Fakes are becoming increasing personal and may become a severe generational problem if not kept in check.
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This is scary AF. Thanks for the informative article. Great work!
Your article on Deep Fakes should scar all of us to the bone. But I firmly believe that knowledge is power. It’s is power because it generates an ability for us to be skeptical and not trust on face value. Parents should be weary of evil people using their kids photos and videos in a perverted way.
Thank you for this very informative article. It was absolutely eye opening!