Deepfake is a portmanteau word combining “deep learning” and “fake.” Using powerful techniques from machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), deepfakes can create convincing, but entirely fictional disinformation — images or audio — by mimicking and learning from given materials. Deepfake video and audio can appear so real as to be indistinguishable from the original.
A Taiwanese YouTuber was arrested on Monday last week for allegedly creating and selling deepfake porn videos featuring celebrities. The Criminal Investigation Bureau confirmed that it was Taiwan’s first case of a new type of crime that involves deepfakes employing AI algorithms.
For several years, deepfake technology has been a topic of heated debate in Western nations. There have been many deepfake videos of celebrities, such as former US president Barack Obama and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and deepfakes have become weapons for parties interested in information warfare, not to mention that hundreds of actresses worldwide have become victims of synthetic porn.
The scary thing is that deepfakes can be used to fake bad things that a person has not done, as well as good things that a person did not do. There are many tools available for creating deepfakes — people do not have to be an information engineer to make them.
However, society’s deepest fear is that the technology used to generate deepfake porn not only hurts the victims, but could also be used to create deepfake video and audio files of presidents, government officials and political party leaders — thus disturbing law and order, undermining elections, causing political turmoil and the polarization of popular opinion. The social impact of deepfakes on public order should not be underestimated.
Presently, although some European and US law enforcement agencies and tech firms, such as Google and Microsoft, have invested in the development of deepfake detection software, to verify whether images have been modified or synthesized, these countermeasures are not enough to stop deepfake videos from circulating online and spreading disinformation.
Taiwan has so far not enacted laws and penalties that would regulate deepfake videos. The authorities should refer to international practices as soon as possible to bridge the gap.
The government should improve the accountability of online platforms so that they monitor users’ content; it should consider the manipulation of faces in video to be a crime; and it should enact regulations that clearly delineate the criminal, civil and administrative liabilities to deter crimes that employ new technology.
Wei Shih-chang is an information engineer.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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