Pentagon's AI director calls for stronger deepfake protections

The head of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center recently declared that deepfakes pose a very real threat to national security. Speaking at an AI conference on Thursday, Lt. General Jack Shanahan told the crowd that disinformation tactics, including deepfake videos, could have a serious impact on the upcoming election unless the government seriously invests in ways to counter them, according to C4ISRNET. The warning paints a troubling picture of the future, where democracy and national security could be compromised by convincing, AI-generated media. DARPA, the Pentagon's research division, has already spent tens of millions of dollars on anti-deepfake technology. But, as Shanahan notes, trying to catch up with the tech driving these AI-generated videos is a bit of a cat-and-mouse game.