Congress charges IARPA with creating prize challenges for 5G, deepfake detection Federal News Network

Congress is authorizing $10 million in prize money to help the Defense Department reach out to the public to battle foreign disinformation, and to further ramp up the Pentagon's 5G technologies. The 2020 defense authorization act allows the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) to use the funds for two prize competitions: one for 5G, and the other to study and detect deepfake technology. Deepfakes are videos manipulated to look like a celebrity or politician said something they did not say. Foreign and domestic groups are using the videos to sway public opinion. The defense authorization act allows IARPA $5 million specifically for stimulating "the research, development, or commercialization of technologies to automatically detect machine-manipulated media."