Interest in the phenomenon of “deepfakes” has died down a little in recent months, presumably as the public comes to terms with what seems like an inevitability in 2018 — that people can and will use AI to create super-realistic fake videos and images. But a recent news story by BuzzFeed surfaced the term again in an unexpected setting, inviting the question: what is a deepfake anyway?
The article in question was titled “A Belgian Political Party Is Circulating A Trump Deepfake Video.” From the headline you might expect that this was a high-tech political propaganda campaign; someone using AI to put words in Trump’s mouth and mislead voters. In other words, exactly the sort of scenario experts are deeply worried about with deepfakes. But...
