INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightGoogleImage caption
The database of face-swapped actors is intended to help build tools to fight
deepfakes
Google has released a database of 3,000 deepfakes - videos that use artificial intelligence to alter faces or to
make people say things they never did.The videos are of actors and use a variety of publicly available tools to alter their faces.The search
giant hopes it will help researchers build the tools needed to take down "harmful" fake videos.There are fears such videos could be used to
promote false conspiracy theories and propaganda.Deepfake technology takes video and audio clips of real people, often politicians or
celebrities, and uses artificial-intelligence techniques to alter them in some way, for instance putting words in their mouth or transposing
their head on to body of an actor in pornography.Since their first appearance in 2017, many open-source methods of generating deepfake clips
have emerged.In a blogpost, describing its work, Google said: "Since the field is moving quickly, we'll add to this dataset as deepfake
technology evolves over time and we'll continue to work with partners in this space
"We firmly believe in supporting a thriving research community around mitigating potential harms from misuses of synthetic media."While many
are likely intended to be humorous, others could be harmful to individuals and society."The database will be incorporated into work to
combat deepfakes, at the Technical University of Munich and the University of Naples Federico II .The universities have created a similar
database using four common face-manipulation techniques on nearly 1,000 YouTube videos.It is hoped both these databases will be used to
train automated detection tools to spot fakery.Image copyrightBill PostersImage caption
The deepfake clip features a
computer-generated version of Mark Zuckerberg talking, blinking and moving his head for emphasis
Earlier this month,
been a victim of such trickery, when a manipulated video appeared to show him credit a secretive organisation for the success of the social
network.Deepfake technology hit the headlines in 2017, when University of Washington researchers released a paper describing how they had
created a fake video of President Barack Obama.One of the researchers, Dr Supasorn Suwajanakorn, later defended his invention, in a Ted
talk, while admitting the technology had the potential for misuse.
