In this era of information being a source of power the emergence of the technology of deepfakes is a menace on the rise; particularly that of deepfake interviews. Initially, deepfakes were created with an aim to provide entertainment and creative possibilities but very quickly have become an instrument of misinformation, fraud and identity theft. A deepfake interview is a counterfeited video where an individual seems to talk or perform something, in a manner they never did, and is fabricated using artificial intelligence and video editing. With technology being advanced, it is becoming challenging to tell a real video and one that is fake.
In this blog, we willl delve into what deepfake interviews consist of, their production process, their scams that they are propagating and how deepfake video detection technologies may assist in averting the damages that such deepfakes inflict.
What is Deepfake Interview?
A deepfake interview is one of the forms of synthetic video generated with the help of Artificial Intelligence during which a person can be made to look like he/she provides an interview, responds to a question, shares opinions or presents statements, which s/he did not really provide. Such videos are commonly so realistic that they are shocking. The AI is capable of not recreating only the face expressions and voice of an individual, but their gestures and pitch as well. This endangers them in the political and professional sphere.
Conceive a situation which will involve a CEO being interviewed that his company is about to go bankrupt. Or a politician is set up to look like he/she has confessed to a crime that he has not done. These doctored videos might become viral and cause havoc until the real truth emerges, which might not be readily possible.
Deepfake Technology
Deepfake is an artificial picture created by a computing tool, normally machine learning, particularly neural systems such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Hours of video and audio material of a target person is trained on the AI. When trained it can generate very persuasive fac-similes of that person doing or saying virtually anything.
Although this technology is amazing, it is a two-edged knife. It is employed in the creative industry to create the appearance of actors on the screen or re-fix archaic videos. It is however, being misused in the hands of the wrong people to produce fake videos that are distorted and used to lie and even defraud.
Deepfake Scams: The Use of Fake Interviews
The worst news about fake interviews with deepfake is how it has been applied in deepfake scams in the real world. A couple of examples are as follows:
Corporate Scams: Hackers have also produced deep fake videos of senior executives directing workers to make transfers to unfamiliar accounts. In other instances, employees obeyed such orders without asking questions in mind that they were genuine orders.
Media Deception: People have created false interviews of celebrities or politicians to misinform or change the opinion of the people.
Phishing and Job Fraud: Other attackers use deepfake professionals to pretend that they are human resources or recruiters. These spammers perform such phony interviews and they gather some confidential personal information of job hunters.
Defamation: People have been smeared by created interviews to ruin a name or sway the populace’s opinion.
The fact that such deepfake interviews are so realistic makes it hard to disprove them even in case the manipulated video is presented by a seemingly trustworthy news source or governmental account.
Fake Video Detection Problem
Detecting fake videos is also one of the greatest challenges to combating this issue. With deepfakes getting sophisticated enough, even professionals may not tell the difference between real and fake. Conventional watermarking or signature-based detecting techniques do not usually work with deepfakes because they were created without leaving a single trace of source footage.
But there are also emerging AI-based deepfake technologies that examine variations in eye movement, eye blinking, shadows on the face and lip syncing problems. Such tricky indicators can be used to discover altered content. As an example, when someone blinks too much or too little, or lighting on the face does not reflect on the background, this represents a possible fake video.
Advice on Guarding Yourself and Your Organization
Since the danger of video manipulation is on the increase, both individuals and businesses should actively engage in the field of combating video manipulation and remaining safe of video manipulation scam:
Instruct the workforce on the internet on deepfakes and how to detect suspicious materials.
Check the sources of all the videos, in particular those that sound unusual or have such shocking statements.
Apply trustworthy deepfake detection tools that identify fake videos. Software companies such as Microsoft, Deepwave and Sensity AI have made tools that can identify manipulated media.
Restrict information: It is advisable that celebrities and other public personalities should limit their public access data in the form of video and audio recordings of their voices mainly because that is what is used to create deepfake models.
Two step verification: In a hot business situation, send important directions via a second channel of communication.
Future of Deepfake Interviews
The war between the creators and the detectors will go on as deepfake technology develops. World regulators are starting to pay attention. Legislation is under consideration or adoption that punishes the malicious use of deep fakes, especially the instances that lead to financial and reputational loss.
Simultaneously, it is necessary not to underestimate the role of public awareness. The greater we would make people realize that whatever they view on the internet is not the truth, the stronger we would create to overcome these types of fake surfing.
Conclusion
Deepfake interviews are not a matter of the future fantasy: these are the events that are occurring nowadays, and their consequences are seriously observed. Fake videos can be used as weapons of destruction in that they can be used to spread misinformation, as well as implement scams, among other activities. Although deepfake video detection tools are a source of protection, the most responsible protection is awareness and skepticism. Trust is what you are shown, not what you see.
