US army develops new tool to detect deepfakes threatening national security

US Army scientists have developed a novel tool that can help soldiers detect deepfakes that pose threat to national security. The advance could lead to a mobile software that warns people when fake videos are played on the phone. Deepfakes are hyper-realistic video content made using artificial intelligence tools that falsely depicts individuals saying or doing something, explained Suya You and Shuowen (Sean) Hu from the Army Research Laboratory in the US. The growing number of these fake videos in circulation can be harmful to society – from the creation of non-consensual explicit content to doctored media by foreign adversaries that are used in disinformation campaigns. According to the scientists, while there were close to 8,000 of these deepfake video clips online at the beginning of 2019, in just about nine months, this number nearly doubled to about 15,000.