Deepfake used to attack activist couple shows new disinformation frontier
‘A VENTRILOQUIST’S DUMMY’
The Taylor persona is a rare in-the-wild example of a phenomenon that has emerged as a key anxiety of the digital age: The marriage of deepfakes and disinformation.
The threat is drawing increasing concern in Washington and Silicon Valley. Last year House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff warned that computer-generated video could “turn a world leader into a ventriloquist’s dummy.” Last month Facebook announced the conclusion of its Deepfake Detection Challenge - a competition intended to help researchers automatically identify falsified footage. Last week online publication The Daily Beast revealed a network of deepfake journalists - part of a larger group of bogus personas seeding propaganda online.
Brahmy said investigators chasing the origin of such photos are left “searching for a needle in a haystack – except the needle doesn’t exist.”
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