Three ways to spot a deepfake

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2 min readFeb 13, 2024

🔮 Hello from the future, when we’ll all have deepfake boyfriends?
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It’s the year 2035. You wake up, strap on your Apple Vision Air, and jump into a Zoom with your boss. A few minutes in, something feels very wrong. You’re supposed to trust this person, yet they’re making demands that seem… unlike them?

That’s (sort of) what happened last week, when an innocent finance worker paid $25 million to a scammer after speaking with a deepfaked “chief financial officer.” I feel bad for this person, and for all of us, because soon we’ll have to contend with much weirder scams than those spammy texts asking you for Apple gift cards.

On Medium, AI expert Paul DelSignore shares three rules for spotting a deepfake:

  1. Learn how they work. With a few minutes of footage, anyone can create a deepfake of you. Here’s DelSignore showing us how easy it is to make one.
  2. Choose a code word. In the future, maybe every family will have a shared word? If you suspect something amiss on a call with a friend or loved one, ask them to say the word. Importantly, you can only exchange these code words in the meatspace — never over text, video, or audio.
  3. Get deepfake detection software. DelSignore recommends a few options, including DeepwareAI. It’s free, quick, and easy to scan a URL for possible AI behavior, though he notes that as AI advances, detection software will constantly struggle to keep up.

Are you an engineer who knows something we don’t about deepfakes, or how to spot them? Share your wisdom on Medium and add the “Daily Edition’’ topic so we can all learn from you.

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