Deepfake Danger

Isaac Miller
im830016@ohio.edu

  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/deepfake-videos-are-a-national-security-threat


One of our readings for the week discussed deepfakes and how The Wall Street Journal prepares its journalists for them. J.M. Porup of CSO defines deepfakes as "fake videos or audio recordings that look and sound just like the real thing." They can make it seem like a certain person said something they actually never said, They can also make it look like a person moved a certain way, but they actually never did do what they are doing in the deepfake video. Deepfake software can be downloaded by anyone and can be used to do things such as making it seem like a politician said something funny. Deepfakes could also be used to do bad things such as making someone say danger is coming or making it seem like a politician is saying something they shouldn't during an election.

Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, said that the danger of deepfakes is equal to that of nuclear weapons. He said that having access to the internet could allow someone to make a fake video that could put our country in danger. I agree with Rubio that the internet can be used to do dangerous things that can put people's lives on the line. I don't think the internet itself is as dangerous as nuclear weapons because there are good things that you can do with it, but there are still bad things it can be used for.

Computer science professor Hany Farid told Jeff Pegues of CBS News that someone could make a video of the president saying that he has launched nuclear weapons, and there would not be time to figure out if he actually said it or not. This sort of goes back to what Rubio said about the danger of deepfakes. It is possible that other countries could try to attack us if they saw a video of our president claiming he launched nuclear weapons against them.

It seems obvious to me now that deepfakes are not something to be overlooked because they could be used to put people in danger, but they could also be used just for spreading false information and making people look bad. Let's say there was a person running for an office, and there was a deepfake video made of them saying something bad that they never said. People might see the video and believe that the person actually said those things, and they would not want to like and support them. Another example could be a deepfake video that makes a celebrity say something bad that they would likely not say in real life. I believe that we as journalists need to be on the lookout for things such as deepfakes because they can cause false information to be spread, and we are supposed to report the truth. Some deepfakes may seem funny, but we need to keep in mind that false, dangerous, or harmful deepfakes could be made using the same technology. I think that we need to be careful when we see videos that seem too weird to be true because they may not be the truth. We cannot take videos that depict people saying threatening things lightly because there is always a possibility they could be true.