Now Even Satellite Images Are Not Deep Fake-Proof

It's making data look uncannily realistic" Recently, Bo Zhao, along with his team of researchers at the University of Washington, argued that with the widespread use of geographic information systems, Google Earth, and other satellite imagery systems, location spoofing has become much more sophisticated. Yifan Sun, a student in the UW Department of Geography, Shaozeng Zhang and Chunxue Xu of Oregon State University, and Chengbin Deng of Binghamton University, co-authored the report. Zhao, along with his team, deployed machine learning algorithms that take in the satellite images of urban areas to learn their characteristics and then impose them into the base map of another city to produce a deep fake image as output. "As technology continues to evolve, this study aims to encourage a more holistic understanding of geographic data and information so that we can demystify the question of absolute reliability of satellite images or other geospatial data. We also want to have more future-oriented thinking to take countermeasures such as fact-checking when necessary," Zhao said.