Facebook, Microsoft, and others launch Deepfake Detection Challenge

Deepfakes, or media that takes a person in an existing image, audio recording, or video and replaces them with someone else's likeness using AI algorithms, are multiplying quickly. Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Deeptrace found 14,698 deepfake videos on the internet during its most recent tally in June and July, up from 7,964 last December -- an 84% increase within only seven months. That's troublesome not only because deepfakes might be used to sway public opinion during, say, an election, or to implicate someone in a crime they didn't commit, but because the technology has already generated pornographic material and swindled firms out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In an effort to fight deepfakes' spread, Facebook -- along with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, the Partnership on AI, Microsoft, and academics from Cornell Tech, MIT, University of Oxford, UC Berkeley; University of Maryland, College Park; and State University of New York at Albany -- are spearheading the Deepfake Detection Challenge, which was announced in September. It's launching globally at the NeurIPS 2019 conference in Vancouver this week, with the goal of catalyzing research to ensure the development of open source detection tools.