What is deepfake and how to be safe from it?

From Indian actresses, billionaires to Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, many have been victims of deepfake videos. “Anybody who has a computer and access to the internet can technically produce a ‘deepfake’ video,” says John Villasenor who is a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California. The word deepfake combines the terms “deep learning” and “fake” and it is a form of artificial intelligence.

Deepfakes: A threat to your Personal Data!

Deepfakes are videos that are creating a delusion with the use of deep learning, AI and photoshopping techniques. These images and videos of spread disinformation.The technologies like, GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks) or ML (Machine Learning) are interplayed to create the videos. Deepfakes could be imitation of a face, body, sound, speech, environment, or any other personal information manipulated to create an impersonation.

Greatest risks that can be caused by deepfake!

According to a report of a cybersecurity firm, deepfake pornographic videos are aimed and targeted majorly at women than men. Women form 90% of the victims of crimes like revenge porn, non-consensual porn and other forms of harassment and deepfake is one more in the list.

Deepfakes are not just limited to creation of imagery and videos!! They can cost you politically, financially too. there exist AI tools to clone the voices of individuals to execute financial scams. About 47% of Indian adults have experienced or know someone who have experienced some kind of AI voice scam.

Laws against Deepfakes in India:

The govt, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, on Thursday announced  their plans to draft new regulations or amend existing laws in order to deal with the deepfake menace. On Friday Union Minister of State Rajiv Chandrasekhar said that the government is going to appoint an officer who will take appropriate action against such content.   The drafted regulations are based on four pillars:

• 1. Detection of deepfakes
• 2. Prevention of the deepfakes
• 3. Building of grievance and reporting mechanism
• 4. Raising awareness

Indian Prime Minister Modi said, “This AI technology should be developed keeping in mind the needs of the common people. This technology should reach everyone. But we have to keep in mind that this technology is safe for the society. Deepfake has become a major concern these days.”   

Union Ministry of Information and Technology is going to launch a website. There victims can report information and technology law violations. Victims will also be helped to file cases.

Ranjana Adhikari, Partner, INDUSLAW said,  “A recently proposed anti-deepfakes law in the US excludes parodies, satire and criticism from its ambit but a similar exception may not be suitable for India at this juncture. Also, regulations will have to be supplemented by mass awareness about how to recognise deepfakes and why seeing is no longer believing.”