When does a digital image resemble reality? The relevance of this question increases as the generation of synthetic images -- so called deep fakes -- becomes increasingly popular. Deep fakes have gained much attention for a number of reasons -- among others, due to their potential to disrupt the political climate. In order to mitigate these threats, the EU AI Act implements specific transparency regulations for generating synthetic content or manipulating existing content. However, the distinction between real and synthetic images is -- even from a computer vision perspective -- far from trivial. We argue that the current definition of deep fakes in the AI act and the corresponding obligations are not sufficiently specified to tackle the challenges posed by deep fakes. By analyzing the life cycle of a digital photo from the camera sensor to the digital editing features, we find that: (1.) Deep fakes are ill-defined in the EU AI Act. The definition leaves too much scope for what a deep fake is. (2.) It is unclear how editing functions like Google's ``best take'' feature can be considered as an exception to transparency obligations. (3.) The exception for substantially edited images raises questions about what constitutes substantial editing of content and whether or not this editing must be perceptible by a natural person. Our results demonstrate that complying with the current AI Act transparency obligations is difficult for providers and deployers. As a consequence of the unclear provisions, there is a risk that exceptions may be either too broad or too limited. We intend our analysis to foster the discussion on what constitutes a deep fake and to raise awareness about the pitfalls in the current AI Act transparency obligations.

'The Five' co-hosts discuss how President Biden appeared to freeze again at a recent fundraiser. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a wave of criticism Monday after claiming a series of viral videos of President Biden appearing frail in the past week were "deepfakes." Numerous controversial videos have emerged of Biden during his visits to commemorate D-Day in France, attend the G-7 summit in Italy, and attend a recent fundraiser for his campaign that have raised questions about his age. Jean-Pierre was asked about "a rash of videos that have been edited to make the president appear especially frail or mentally confused," and responded by calling them "cheap fakes," a phrase she attributed to the Washington Post, "pushing misinformation, disinformation." "It tells you everything that we need to know about how desperate Republicans are here," Jean-Pierre said.

In October last year Francesa Mani came home from school in the suburbs of New Jersey with devastating news for her mother, Dorota. Earlier in the day the 14-year-old had been called into the vice-principal's office and notified that she and a group of girls at Westfield High had been the victims of targeted abuse by a fellow student. Faked nude images of her and others had been circulating around school. They had been generated by artificial intelligence. Dorota had been tangentially aware of the power of this relatively new technology, but the ease with which the images were generated took her aback.

Within the next five years, the way we work, live, play, and learn will be changed by digital humans (chatbots and avatars with very realistic human faces). Digital humans are already gaining popularity as social media influencers, and they will soon evolve into digital sales assistants, fashion advisers, and personal shoppers able to model how customers will look and move in the latest ensembles. Digital humans will become central to the multibillion-dollar fashion industry, as social media is further integrated into the retail customer experience. Digital humans will also help in healthcare, enabling medical students and social workers to develop better interview skills for patients in sensitive clinical settings. They will allow people, especially those with mental health challenges, to rehearse for job interviews. They will help keep elderly people connected to their communities and respectfully monitored so they can remain in their homes longer. They will provide a human face for personalized advice, support, and training--and do it at scale. This has become possible with the advent of cost-effective, highly realistic, personalized interactive digital agents and avatars sporting high-fidelity facial simulations powered by advances in both real-time neural rendering (NR) and low-latency computing. NR refers to the use of machine-learning (ML) techniques to generate digital faces or face replacements in video.17 NR rose to prominence with the advent of so-called "deep fakes"--the replacement of someone's face in videos with an NR-generated face of remarkable realism. The term originates from the name of a Reddit user (/u/deepfakes), a ML engineer who posted the original deep fake auto-encoder. Often used for satire, deep fakes can be harmful, presenting novel ethical issues. The best-known examples involve deep fakes of celebrities, a form of face "hijacking" whereby publicly available videos of a person are used to train an ML program that overlays the source person's face onto existing video footage; this technique was originally used in pornographic material.

Tom Newhouse, vice president of Convergence Media, discusses the potential impact of artificial intelligence on elections after an RNC AI ad garnered attention. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., warned this week that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using artificial intelligence to stoke disinformation globally through "deep fakes." "The CCP will stop at nothing to sow chaos and confusion within our country and around the world." Ricketts said at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing. "Deep fakes are the newest chapter in disinformation operations used to weaken the United States and our allies. We must develop a cross-government strategy to combat these threats."

Artificial Intelligence is poised to create a seismic shift in entertainment, and the technology isn't just in development. It's arrived and Hollywood needs to be prepared. That was the message of a SAG-AFTRA-hosted CES panel, as AI-driven tools permeated the consumer tech show's exhibition halls. Nina Schick, author and advisor on generative AI, projected that 90 percent of content may be -- at least in part -- AI-generated by 2025. She further predicted that everyone in the audience would be planning to use some form of generative AI within the month.

Most people who own a mobile phone or have an online banking account know what facial recognition technology is even if they do not use it. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), the software identifies or confirms someone's identity by scanning heir face. Once activated, facial recognition makes user authentication easier and faster when someone logs into a site or uses their mobile device. Unfortunately, facial recognition is not foolproof. Malicious parties continue to find ways to spoof their way past interfaces that use facial recognition and hack protected sites and devices.

We join the disucssion as Bernard gives us a peek into his keynote speeches as a futurist. You can listen to the full conversation above. Bernard Marr: Each time I give a presentation somewhere in keynotes, or talk to senior executive teams in companies, and talk about how technologies like artificial intelligence, and blockchain and robotics are going to change our world over the next 10 years, the next question is, okay, what does that mean for us humans? How do we compete with increasingly intelligent robots and when AI robots can be machines, but can also be devices? We now have smartwatches, smart speakers, smart everything, and really intelligent robots that can drive our cars, that can pick food, we have intelligent AI that can do the jobs of lawyers and doctors.

Artificial intelligence has been described as a'general purpose technology'. This means that, like electricity, computers and the internet before it, AI is expected to have applications in every corner of society. Unfortunately for organisations seeking to keep their IT secure, this includes cybercrime. In 2020, a study by European police agency Europol and security provider Trend Micro, identified how cybercriminals are already using AI to make their attacks more effective, and the many ways AI will power cybercrime in future. "Cybercriminals have always been early adopters of the latest technology and AI is no different," said Martin Roesler, head of forward-looking threat research at Trend Micro, when the report was published. "It is already being used for password guessing, CAPTCHA-breaking and voice cloning, and there are many more malicious innovations in the works."

Deepfake is a word that is fashionable: it is about computer-generated images (in the form of photos and videos) that imitate the human appearance. Sometimes they mimic someone real, like a celebrity or acquaintance. But sometimes they are completely unique fake faces. It may be a way to create any new person on the internet, but in the realms of politics, cybersecurity, counterfeiting, and border control, deepfakes are of great concern. However, it seems that the human brain is really good at recognizing fake faces.