Internet Companies Prepare to Fight the 'Deepfake' Future

"You can already see a material effect that deepfakes have had," said Nick Dufour, one of the Google engineers overseeing the company's deepfake research. "They have allowed people to claim that video evidence that would otherwise be very convincing is a fake." For decades, computer software has allowed people to manipulate photos and videos or create fake images from scratch. But it has been a slow, painstaking process usually reserved for experts trained in the vagaries of software like Adobe Photoshop or After Effects. Now, artificial intelligence technologies are streamlining the process, reducing the cost, time and skill needed to doctor digital images.