U.S. Defense Department Produces First Tools for Catching Deepfakes

U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency researchers have created the first forensic tools for detecting deepfake videos. U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) researchers say they have created the first forensic tools for catching fake videos, known as "deepfakes," created with artificial intelligence (AI). The team says the most common technique for generating deepfakes involves using machine learning to graft one person's face onto another person's body. Matthew Turek, who leads DARPA's Media Forensics program, says his team discovered subtle cues in current images and videos manipulated by generative adversarial networks, which allowed them to detect alteration. For example, the researchers realized that faces in deepfakes rarely blink, and when they do, the eye movement is unnatural.