It began, as so many things do, with a horny impulse. Some geek, wanking it in front of a computer screen, got the bright idea to paste a celebrity’s face over the porn star’s — and suddenly, one of the Internet’s newest and most dangerous features was born: the deepfake.
Of course, those first few deepfakes were crude — just a still image of Natalie Portman, Jennifer Lawrence or Brad Pitt’s face, stuck over top of a porn clip — just enough to fool the pre-climax brain.
However, soon they started adding voice recordings to these video clips; adding an audio level to the fake experience and making it feel more authentic. Then came facial expressions, and eventually speech to match them.
Since those first celebrity porn deepfakes came out, the technology behind deepfake videos has improved immensely. And it’s done so unsettlingly fast. In 2019 there were 7,964 deep-fake videos online, according to Deeptrace, a startup that is tracking deep-fake technology. Today, in 2020, that number has nearly doubled, to 14,678 videos.
And, while 96% of those are still limited to pornography, increasingly, deep-fake videos are starting to target politicians and other public figures. The agenda is drifting from porn into politics and deepfakes are becoming weaponized to a much greater degree than anyone could have ever imagined.
“In January 2019, deep fakes were buggy and flickery,” Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor and deepfake expert, told the Financial Times. “Nine months later, I’ve never seen anything like how fast they’re going. This is the tip of the iceberg.”
The first known use of a deepfake video for political purposes, was released by Belgium’s Socialistische Partij Anders (their socialist party). In the clip, Donald Trump appears to be taunting Belgium for having remained in the Paris climate accord. The video is pretty crude and clearly fake, but even still, it fooled a lot of people into believing that it was real. So much so, that Belgium’s socialist party had to come out and clarify that it was in fact a deepfake.
In another infamous political deepfake video, Nancy Pelosi was slowed down and her speech altered such that it sounded like she was drunk and slurring her words on stage. The video went viral among conservative corners of the web, and tore through Facebook like a wildfire. It was a pretty damning clip and Facebook refused to take it video down, even after it was proven to be manufactured.
In response to that refusal by Facebook, artist Bill Posters created a deepfake of Mark Zuckerberg talking about how Facebook literally “owns” its users, which he posted on both Facebook and Instagram.
“Imagine this for a second,” Zuckerberg’s likeness says, staring straight intobthe camera. “One man, with total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures. I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data, controls the future.”
Spectre was a deepfake project by Posters that brought AI, big data, dada and conceptual art together to bring us videos like this one of Kim Kardashian.
Then there’s Obama’s public service announcement — courtesy of Jordan Peele.
“Better Call Trump” is a more recent creation and a spoof on the television show “Better Call Saul.” And, if we’re being honest, Trump does play a convincing sleazy lawyer — he’s not half bad for the role.
And, of course, who could forget the creepy, post-mortem cameo that princess Leia made in Star Wars: Rogue One? This was perhaps the most convincing and eerie deepfake creation out there so far. Carrie Fisher was dead and had been for some time, when her likeness made its debut on the silver screen.
It’s obvious that deepfake videos are powerful and they can be used to achieve many different ends: entertainment, education, deception and/or misrepresentation. With a truly convincing deepfake, you can put any words you want, into any person’s mouth; you can put someone in a compromising position that they’ve never actually been in; you can create propaganda on a frighteningly advanced and effective level.
This technology is going to become a very important part of political, social and cultural discussions moving forward. It allows people to bend and even totally rewrite reality, to confuse the general public. Every election from this point forward will have to deal with deepfake videos; every good-looking celebrity will have to accept that they’re now also porn stars; and even the deceased will be able to continue performing long past their deaths.
It’s a strange future we’re hurtling into — there’s no doubt about that. Keeping our grip on reality and The Truth is going to be exceptionally important to maintaining any kind of social order as things get even weirder.
And deepfake videos are not going to make that easy. Reality as we know it is about to become a very slippery thing to get a handle on.
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