Perfect Deepfake Tech Could Arrive Sooner Than Expected

Professor Hao Li used to think it could take two to three years for the perfection of deepfake videos to make copycats indistinguishable from reality. But now, the associate professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, says this technology could be perfected in as soon as six to 12 months. Deepfakes are realistic manipulated videos that can, for example, make it look a person said or did something they didn't. "The best possible algorithm will not be able to distinguish," he says of the difference between a perfect deepfake and real videos. Li says he's changed his mind because developments in computer graphics and artificial intelligence are accelerating the development of deepfake applications.