AI spots deepfake videos of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A deepfake detector can spot fake videos of Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy with high accuracy by analysing a combination of voices, facial expressions and upper body movements. This detection system could not only protect Zelenskyy, who was the target of a deepfake attempt during the early months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also be trained to flag deepfakes of other world leaders and business tycoons. "We don't have to distinguish you from a billion people – we just have to distinguish you from [the deepfake made by] whoever is trying to imitate you," says Hany Farid at the University of California, Berkeley. Farid worked with Matyáš Boháček at Johannes Kepler Gymnasium in the Czech Republic to develop detection capabilities for faces, voices, hand gestures and upper body movements. Their research builds on previous work in which an AI system was trained to detect deepfake faces and head movements of world leaders, such as former president Barack Obama. Boháček and Farid trained a computer model on more than 8 hours of video featuring Zelenskyy that had previously been posted publicly.