Tech Report: Spotting Signs of a Deep Fake, Ways of Identifying and much more…

Amid growing global concerns, Singapore has decided to propose a law to ban deepfakes of electoral candidates during their campaigning period and till the elections are over.

The rise of such content digitally manipulated to look or sound like someone else has contributed to the increasing difficulty of determining if something online is original or fake.

Deep fakes have been used in scams involving political office holders from US President Joe Biden to Singapore’s past and present Prime Ministers to celebrities like Taylor Swift. The Deepfake has been used to generate pornographic content too degrading the online world. Pornography content makes up 90 percent of deep fake videos.

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Ways of Identification of Deep Fake Content

Ms Ong Si Ci, a lead engineer in AI and Machine Learning has broken down the ways to spot a deep fake video or photo content in the following ways.

According to Ms Ong, the typical signs of deep fake content are as follows;

• Excessive blurring or inconsistencies around the edges of faces.
• Inconsistent skin tone or lighting around the space, compared with other regions of the face or surrounding conditions.
• There has to be proper synchronisation between audio and video.
• In a speech, there can be unnatural, monotonous ways of speaking.

Yet as the time has evolved, the signs of identifying deep fakes have increasingly become difficult to spot, as online tools get better and more powerful at generating realistic deep fakes. 

If unsure, the next best thing is to try to verify the content against other trusted media sources. Another way to find out about the authenticity of the content generated is to report online or social media platforms via question format.