Deepfakes Videos Will No Longer Be 'Just For Fun'

Deepfakes comes with both fun and worries, especially when being misused as content in politics and pornography. In the meantime, California is the first state in the US that has new bills signed into law to limit all potential threatens. The first will identify a manipulated video as illegal if it discredits candidates by replacing their face or speech within 60 days of an election. For other non-politician residents, they can sue anyone if he/she made a deepfakes-powered porn video from their original images.

Deepfakes technology has become famous since the Internet was floated by a video originally featuring Bill Hader but then replaced by Tom Cruise’s face. Such an amusing video, but things went so far when a deepfakes software creates fake content by combining celebrities’ faces onto the bodies of porn stars. Those appear to be seriously disturbing invasions of private privacy.

As for politics, a video used deepfakes technology was wrongfully edited with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi looking drunken during a speech. However, Facebook decided to not remove the video, citing that it would instead roll out a third-party article for fast checking to highlight the fact that the original video had got edited.

According to Marc Berman – a representative at the California Assembly, these types of videos could deceive the public as well as affect results from elections. On the voters’ side. Such videos or images could likely influence their decision in an upcoming election without the consent of how they were manipulated to deliver wrong views that are far different from those in reality. As such, deepfakes technology is nothing but a powerful and dangerous tool for those who want to scale up misinformation campaigns and make voters stuck in confusion.