Charlene Pepiot
Charlene.Pepiot1.@gmail.com
The age of the internet and Photoshop has allowed almost anyone to manipulate content and pass it off as being real. Depending on the editor's skill level, manipulated photos can be easy to spot, such as a Flordia high school's poor attempt to cover female students' cleavage or the so-called destruction of the Lincoln Memorial following protests over George Floyd's death in 2020. However, more advanced manipulation can be difficult to differentiate from what is real to the untrained eye. Here are some tips to help spot fake imagery.
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| Original image from TMZ.com |
According to Niemanlab, deepfakes are based on a machine learning technique that can swap the features of two people--often a politician and an actor, and through a combination of lip-syncing, face swapping, and facial reenactments, can give the illusion that the politician is falsely speaking or doing something, such as the Queen of England dancing to Gotye's "Somebody that I Used to Know". Despite the real look of deepfakes, running them through video editing software and looking for alterations, such as differences in skin tone, inconsistent lighting, and a stretching neck, can help pick out the fake from the real.
Deepfakes are also usually created with preexisting footage, so searching for the original online through Google Image Search or Tineye and watching it alongside the alleged deepfake can help you discern if parts were manipulated.
The audio of a video can also be altered, such as making politicians sound sluggish and drunk by altering an audio's pitch and manipulating its speed. In such cases, it is important to use the aforementioned Google Image Search and Tineye to find preexisting clips with the audio and compare them to find any differences.
No matter the content, checking the source that uploaded it can shed light on its validity Facebook posts and other social media uploads are not verified before publication, and their accessibility can make them spread quickly and be taken as truth. This can be especially problematic when other noteworthy news sources pick up these fake stories and bring attention to them.
It is important to remember that thousands of reshares do not equal accuracy or truth. Always make sure to find the content's original uploader and make sure it is from a reliable source. Websites that end in ".gov" and ".edu" are generally considered credible, for instance. Doing so will help filter out the content that is manipulated and what is fake news from what is real.
Hello Charlene. I really enjoyed reading your blog post and it is honestly scary what technology can do now and how it can manipulate the truth. These altered photos and videos can be shared so quickly and the audience would not think to ask if this content is edited? As an audience member I try to keep in mind that things are not always as it seems. The distribution of this edited content or “fake news” does not help the growing issue of lack of trust in the media.
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