Legislation passed to better spot deepfakes
"There's no one silver bullet against deepfakes," says Sam Gregory with Witness.org.
The hyper-realistic digital manipulations have targeted celebrities, especially women, and in some cases political figures and campaigns by manipulating images and spreading misinformation.
"Deepfakes are a way to make people look like the said or did something they never did in a way that's hard to detect to the human eye," adds Gregory.
In response to the rise of deepfakes, a bi-partisan group of U.S Senators, including Rob Portman, passed the Deepfake Report Act Tuesday, which will direct the Department of Homeland Security to conduct an annual study of deepfakes.
"We need the platforms to make sure they build detection mechanisms and make those available to as many people as possible," said Gregory. "It's good that Congress is paying attention, and this bill today is one that basically puts resources into understanding the problem better. I don't think congress should be jumping to act on this right away, we don't know the scope of the problem, but they definitely need to understand it.'"
Gregory adds that there are specific ways to detect deepfakes, including distortions to the forehead or even abnormalities in teeth. Still, he cautions that what may be able to be spotted now may change in months from now.
"Whack a mole is a good way to describe how to combat Deepfakes, part of it is the way they're generated is an adversarial cat and mouse process, so the process gets better as you build more and more deepfakes," adds Gregory.