Microsoft launches a deepfake detector tool ahead of US election – TechCrunch

Microsoft has added to the slowly growing pile of technologies aimed at spotting synthetic media (aka deepfakes) with the launch of a tool for analyzing videos and still photos to generate a manipulation score. The tool, called Video Authenticator, provides what Microsoft calls "a percentage chance, or confidence score" that the media has been artificially manipulated. "In the case of a video, it can provide this percentage in real-time on each frame as the video plays," it writes in a blog post announcing the tech. "It works by detecting the blending boundary of the deepfake and subtle fading or greyscale elements that might not be detectable by the human eye." If a piece of online content looks real but'smells' wrong chances are it's a high tech manipulation trying to pass as real -- perhaps with a malicious intent to misinform people.