Worries Grow That TikTok Is New Home for Manipulated Video and Photos

Conspiracy theorists have posted official White House videos of Mr. Biden on TikTok and offered debunked theories that he is a deepfake. The political consultant Roger Stone claimed on Telegram in September that footage showing him calling for violence ahead of the 2020 election, which CNN aired, was "fraudulent deepfake videos." Lawyers for at least one person charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021 have tried to cast doubt on video evidence from the day by citing "widely available and insidious" deepfake-making technology. "When we enter this kind of world, where things are being manipulated or can be manipulated, then we can simply dismiss inconvenient facts," said Hany Farid, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who sits on TikTok's content advisory council. Tech companies have spent years trying new tools to spot manipulations such as deepfakes.