THE ROLE OF DEEPFAKES IN MALIGN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS : STRATCOMCOE -- NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence THE ROLE OF DEEPFAKES IN MALIGN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS EXCERPTS: ...deepfake images may well have become sufficiently sophisticated that they are undetectable to humans without specialist equipment. A developing awareness that deepfakes can be deployed to deliver false but believable messages as though they are from people we know has led to warnings that ‘violent social unrest’ may be triggered by deepfakes,13 and a concern that ‘digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint’ However, much of the current alarm over the potential impact of deepfakes overlooks the fact that this technology has already been available for some time, yet was not exploited for malicious purposes when it was still relatively unknown and would have had the greatest power to convince an unwary public. Deepfakes in any format are rapidly approaching the point where they are sufficiently convincing as to be indistinguishable from humans by humans. This highlights the need for a reliable and universally applicable assay method; in effect, a Voigt-Kampff test to tell deepfakes from content based on real people.  Neural networks can be used not only to generate deepfakes, but also to detect them.53 In detection as well as creation, technical capabilities are advancing rapidly; at the time of writing, under controlled circumstances, a neural-network-based tool can spot image manipulation at the level of individual pixels. In August 2019 DARPA, the US  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, announced a tender for ‘technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified multi-modal media assets (text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks’. Making deepfakes illegal has also been proposed. While the principles behind use of deepfakes for deception may not be novel, the relatively new technology involved does raise new legal and juridical implications, including whether deepfakes can be legislated against on the grounds of falsehood, and determining the evidential standards required. The remaining realistic option is to continue the arms race: bolstering resilience to malign exploitation of deepfakes by educating the public, enhancing the resilience of video-and audio-based identification processes, and incorporating measures to identify and flag deepfakes online in real time. STRATCOMCOE @STRATCOMCOE  Nov 8 New publication from @KeirGiles, KimHartmann, and @MuniraMustaffa on deepfakes, analyzing the infamous LinkedIn account of Katie Jones, and providing an outlook to the future with policy recommendations. PDF FOUND AT THIS TWEET: https://twitter.com/STRATCOMCOE/status/1192747443546415105 Q!UW.yye1fxo 6 Mar 2018 - 4:32:35 PM 868 Try, try, try, as they might. Fail, they will. No free passes [MSM]. Q