What are deepfakes?

In 2018, a big fan of Nicholas Cage showed us what The Fellowship of the Ring would look like if Cage starred as Frodo, Aragorn, Gimly, and Legolas. The technology he used was deepfake, a type of application that uses artificial intelligence algorithms to manipulate videos. Deepfakes are mostly known for their capability to swap the faces of actors from one video to another. They first appeared in 2018 and quickly rose to fame after they were used to modify adult videos to feature the faces of Hollywood actors and politicians. In the past couple of years, deepfakes have caused much concern about the rise of a new wave of AI-doctored videos that can spread fake news and enable forgers and scammers.