The societal threat is terrifying, but deepfakes needn't provoke deep pessimism - The EE

There can be no doubt that the ability of AI to create fake multi-media content that is utterly convincing to humans represents a real and present threat to society, says Tim Winchcomb, head of technology strategy in wireless and digital services at Cambridge Consultants. The democratisation of manipulation techniques means that YouTubers already aspire to Hollywood-grade visual effects, while malicious individuals across the world stand ready to weaponise their synthetic realities. Yet all is not lost industry players are stepping up to meet the deepfakes challenge, convinced that a collaborative response will allow technology, and ultimately society, to prevail. The term deepfakes is a construct of deep learning essentially multi-layered neural networks and fake, which of course refers to misleading and usually harmful content that purports to represent reality. It can be particularly terrifying that these bogus moving and still images, audio or written text can be created in real-time.