Recently the internet has been flooded by an interesting trend, videos of famous people with different faces, fake news with altered videos, and a large number of memes that apply this type of montage all this caused by deepfakes.

What are deepfakes?

They are the result of a set of deep learning techniques applied to video manipulation, which consists of two models (One to recognize the target face and another for the face to be added), these are trained with a large data group (dataset) that contains photographs of faces, which is why this method is often seen with celebrities as there is a lot of scattered photographic material on the internet to train and also the larger the data set, the more accurate the result will be.

They are the result of a set of deep learning techniques applied to video manipulation, which consists of two models (One to recognize the target face and another for the face to be added), these are trained with a large data group (dataset) that contains photographs of faces, which is why this method is often seen with celebrities as there is a lot of scattered photographic material on the internet to train and also the larger the data set, the more accurate the result will be.

Scene of the Man of Steel (2013)
On the left is the original scene
On the right a deepfake with Nicolas Cage’s face

However, not all are memes, in fact, this went viral because a Reddit user used this technology to insert the faces of several celebrities in a pornographic video and many people continue to use this for these reasons, additionally, with the improvement of technology and advances on graphics cards, it have been developed tremendously precise models, in which it is possible to work on a face to alter facial expressions and its voice in such a way that in the result the target person appears to be saying what the interlocutor wants to express, causing high concern in politicians, who are often recurring victims of this latest type of deepfake. To mitigate this, ironically, deep learning models have been created to detect them, however, the quality of deepfakes is increasing more and more and these models have become obsolete with the latest releases.

Despite all this, it is undeniable to say that this has been a great discovery when it comes to artificial intelligence, although it is being misused at this present time, it is possible that we are witnessing a future technology for the digital restoration of faces, completely digital actors or the improvement of virtual assistants. We will have to wait to continue observing the various changes that this interesting technology will bring us.

In the mean-time be aware of deepfakes, read news from trustworthy sources and take things with a pinch of salt.

Posted by

Juan Rambal – Backend Developer

DEEPFAKES: A FALSE REALITY | LA ELECTRONIC
Technology
_ _ Luis Bernal Barros

DEEPFAKES: A FALSE REALITY

Recently the internet has been flooded by an interesting trend, videos of famous people with different faces, fake news with altered videos, and a large number of memes that apply this type of montage all this caused by deepfakes.

What are deepfakes?

They are the result of a set of deep learning techniques applied to video manipulation, which consists of two models (One to recognize the target face and another for the face to be added), these are trained with a large data group (dataset) that contains photographs of faces, which is why this method is often seen with celebrities as there is a lot of scattered photographic material on the internet to train and also the larger the data set, the more accurate the result will be.

They are the result of a set of deep learning techniques applied to video manipulation, which consists of two models (One to recognize the target face and another for the face to be added), these are trained with a large data group (dataset) that contains photographs of faces, which is why this method is often seen with celebrities as there is a lot of scattered photographic material on the internet to train and also the larger the data set, the more accurate the result will be.

Scene of the Man of Steel (2013)
On the left is the original scene
On the right a deepfake with Nicolas Cage’s face

However, not all are memes, in fact, this went viral because a Reddit user used this technology to insert the faces of several celebrities in a pornographic video and many people continue to use this for these reasons, additionally, with the improvement of technology and advances on graphics cards, it have been developed tremendously precise models, in which it is possible to work on a face to alter facial expressions and its voice in such a way that in the result the target person appears to be saying what the interlocutor wants to express, causing high concern in politicians, who are often recurring victims of this latest type of deepfake. To mitigate this, ironically, deep learning models have been created to detect them, however, the quality of deepfakes is increasing more and more and these models have become obsolete with the latest releases.

Despite all this, it is undeniable to say that this has been a great discovery when it comes to artificial intelligence, although it is being misused at this present time, it is possible that we are witnessing a future technology for the digital restoration of faces, completely digital actors or the improvement of virtual assistants. We will have to wait to continue observing the various changes that this interesting technology will bring us.

In the mean-time be aware of deepfakes, read news from trustworthy sources and take things with a pinch of salt.

Posted by

Juan Rambal – Backend Developer

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