'Deepfakes,' deep pockets: Facebook spends $10 million on contest for detecting 'constantly evolving' videos

Facebook is spearheading a competition to find new ways to identify computer-altered videos known as "deepfakes." But some artificial-intelligence specialists say the strategy might backfire. Those experts say the contest will probably hasten the already accelerating arms race between the malicious actors using AI to create increasingly realistic faked videos, and the technology companies racing to detect them. "Any algorithm used to identify deepfakes could also be used to make deepfakes better," says Rachel Thomas, a co-founder of machine-learning lab Fast.ai. Already, top artificial-intelligence researchers across the country have been racing to defuse the computer-generated fake videos as fears grow that they could undermine candidates and mislead voters in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.