Jusu Kallon ESQ
In his masterpiece titled, Operation Che Guevara, the American, Nick Carter warned that, “we are living in a world where words can be bought, pictures can be altered, cameras can lie. The real can be made to seem unreal and the unreal real. Truth itself is improbable. False is probable.”
As true as ever, those words from Nick Carter came decades ago. Yes. We have often seen that there are more to things than meet the eyes. Fact though is that not all eyes are piercing enough to look beyond the facades that are ever so common.
Deepfakes (actually a portmanteau word from “deep learning” and “fake”) are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness. Better still, deepfakes refer to manipulated videos, or other digital representations produced by sophisticated artificial intelligence, that yield fabricated images and sounds that appear to be real.
Couple of days ago, the world was greeted by series of deepfake Tom Cruise videos that generated more than 10 million views on TikTok .
The creator of the videos, a Belgian visual effects artist called Chris Ume, 31 presented the Hollywood star playing golf, doing a magic coin trick, and falling over while telling a story about the former Soviet Leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
It should be noted though that experts in the field of Artificial Intelligence or AI were quick to realize that the videos were fake albeit pretty impressed with their quality.
What is most concerning though is that these AI generated videos use a variety of techniques to create situations that have never happened in real life.
Our Sierra Leone is such a “beautiful” country where everything under the sun goes. Not even the so-called literati can save themselves. Need I say we are winning awards for being one of the most abusers of social media?
Ours is a country with folks on social media who consistently spew terrible messages aimed at dividing a citizenry that is otherwise close-knit. Recent voice notes and manipulated pictures from across political party operatives are worrying to say the least. Compatriots with terrible and kafkaesque mindsets are looming large on the country’s social media landscape.
If majority of our people can believe everything they hear on radio and whatsapp voice notes, you cannot be surprised if they believe what the see.
Am afraid but minded to illustrate a fear: How about extreme Party operative(s) manipulate image(s) of a major political player with terrible statements (which could be against a tribe, religion or region) from him or her?
Perhaps am playing kafkaesque as well …
My point is, that deepfake technology can be used to make people believe something that is fundamentally untrue.
It can be easily used to undermine the reputation of a political candidate by making him or her appear to say or do things that never actually occurred.
That said, my research revealed that to detect or figure out a deepfake video, one is advised to have a closer look at the image(s). If the edge of images are blurry or visuals are misaligned – for example where the person’s face and neck meet their body – you will know something is palpably wrong. Inconsistent noise or audio should be considered as well.
But, it should be noted as well that the technology is being perfected, as can be seen in the deepfake Tom Cruise videos making the rounds on social media.
