London.- Counterfeiting using artificial intelligence is quickly becoming one of the biggest problems we face on the internet. Misleading images, videos, and audio are proliferating as a result of the rise and misuse of generative AI tools.
With videos and images digitally manipulated with artificial intelligence, depicting everyone from Taylor Swift to Donald Trump, emerging almost daily, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish what is real from what is not. Video and image generators like DALL-E, Midjourney, and Sora from OpenAI make it easy for people without any technical knowledge to create deepfake images: just write a request and the system produces it.
These fake images may seem harmless. But they can be used to carry out scams and identity theft, or propaganda and electoral manipulation.
This is how you can avoid being fooled by deepfakes:
How to detect deepfake content
In the early days of deepfakes, the technology was far from perfect and often left telltale signs of manipulation. Fact-checkers have pointed out images with obvious errors, such as hands with six fingers or glasses with different lenses.
But as AI has improved, it has become much more difficult to detect fakes. Some widely shared advice — such as looking for unnatural blinking patterns among people in deepfake videos — is no longer valid, said Henry Ajder, founder of the consulting firm Latent Space Advisory and a leading expert on generative AI.
Still, there are some things to keep in mind, he added.
Many of the AI-created deepfake photos, especially of people, have an electronic glow, “a kind of aesthetic softening effect” that makes the skin “look incredibly shiny,” Ajder said.
However, he cautioned that sometimes a creative touch can eliminate this and many other signs of AI manipulation.
Check the consistency of shadows and lighting. Often the subject is well focused and looks convincingly realistic, but the background elements may not be as realistic or shiny.
look at the faces
Face swapping is one of the most common deepfake methods. Experts advise paying close attention to the edges of the face. Does the skin tone on your face match that of the rest of your head or body? Are the edges of the face sharp or blurry?
If you suspect that the video of a person speaking has been manipulated, look at their mouth. Do the lip movements match the audio perfectly?
Ajder suggests looking at the teeth. Are they clear or are they blurry and somehow not matching how they look in real life?
Cybersecurity firm Norton says the algorithms may not yet be sophisticated enough to generate individual teeth, so the lack of individual tooth outlines could be a clue.
Think about the context
Sometimes context is important. Take your time to consider whether what you see is credible.
Journalism website Poynter advises that if you see a public figure doing something that seems “exaggerated, unrealistic or incongruent with their personality,” it could be a deepfake.
For example, would Pope Francis really wear a luxurious quilted jacket, as shown in a famous fake photo? If so, wouldn't there be more additional photos or videos posted by legitimate sources?
Use AI to detect fake content
Another approach is to use AI to fight AI.
Microsoft has developed an authentication tool that can analyze photos or videos to give a confidence score about whether they have been manipulated. FakeCatcher, from integrated circuit maker Intel, uses algorithms to analyze the pixels of an image to determine whether it is real or fake.
There are tools on the Internet that promise to detect fakes if you upload a file or paste a link to suspicious material. But some, like Microsoft's authenticator, are only available to select partners and not to the general public. This is because researchers do not want to alert criminals and give them a greater advantage in the deepfake arms race.
Open access to screening tools could also give people the impression that they are “technologies with extraordinarily advanced features that can outsource critical thinking to do it for us,” when in reality we should be aware of their limitations, says Ajder.
Obstacles to detecting false content
That said, artificial intelligence is advancing at a dizzying pace and AI models are being trained with data from the internet to produce content of increasingly higher quality and fewer failures.
This means there is no guarantee that this advice will still be valid a year from now.
Experts say it could even be dangerous to put the onus on ordinary citizens to become digital Sherlocks, as it could give them a false sense of confidence as it becomes increasingly difficult, even for trained eyes, to detect deepfakes. .
#detect #fake #images #generated