With elections around the corner, shocking videos of demagogues making outrageous comments are common, but when right-minded politicians do it too there is something fishy.

Deepfake videos are flooding social media these days. You should know how to identify a bogus clip before forwarding them to friends.

Sensity

If artificial intelligence (AI) is causing the problem then the solution also lies with AI and machine learning. Sensity is a company that is committed to fighting against such malicious, deepfake videos going around spreading hatred, racism and tarnishing the reputations of individuals and firms. This company was founded in 2018 by machine learning experts and threat intelligence specialists.

Take, for example, the video of Meghan Markle, laughing and “saying” that her husband was not sired by Prince Charles. Crude, shocking and obviously a fake.

If your online photo has been tampered with, making you say and even do inappropriate things, you can now prove it in a court of law that tampering has taken place and sue people who retweet or forward such content.

Worms coming out of Lipton tea bags or maggots crawling out of KFC chicken may be obviously far-fetched but people do believe them and companies whose reputations have been targeted with such realistic videos can take legal steps too.

Sensity’s AI technologies are deployed to help wronged people. If you wish to expose any malicious video, all you need to do is upload the image or video files to https://sensity.ai or send the URL.

The videos will be analysed using the latest deepfake detection technologies. You could detect fake human faces in social media profiles and the latest in face-swap videos with their help.

An important thing that Sensity does is monitor such visual threats in real-time. They will provide their customers with instant alerts giving detailed analysis and degree of severity.

Fakes in politics

In the past year, Microsoft has announced a Video Authenticator tool to combat deepfakes in the political process. It has teamed up with AI Foundation’s Reality Defender 2020 (https://rd2020.org) to make the tool available to institutions involved in the democratic process, including media houses and political parties. One has to apply for an invitation to be able to submit videos for authentication.

Should you encounter a suspicious video, you may get it scanned by Deepware (https://deepware.ai). They have an Android app too.

Another platform that has pledged to fight against fake videos that sow disinformation and distrust is Amber (https://ambervideo.co). Their iOS app it isn’t yet available in the Indian App Store. Keep a watch though; it should come soon.

Deepfake fun

Deepfakes are not only about distrust and disinformation. Take away the threats from deepfakes and you are left with pure fun.

The genealogy website MyHeritage has a program called Deep Nostalgia that animates any old black and white photo. You could see a deceased loved one smile and move and make a few facial gestures, as though they are about to speak. Check it out here: http://bit.ly/3rS2eTQ.

FaceSwap Videos is an iOS app where you can have fun by creating and sharing realistic face swap videos instantly from your phone. You can choose from over a hundred celebrities and curate from over a thousand audio clips for you to lip-sync.

Wombo on Android and iOS creates funny lip-sync videos from your selfies.

With the Parodist video cloning app, you can prank your friends and family with audio messages where recognisable celebrity voices speak to them by name.

Even you can make a deepfake video. All you have to do is visit Online Deepfake Maker at http://bit.ly/3lq36MX, submit a video where you want to swap faces and the app will do the rest for you.

The reason this website exists is to show you how easy it is to make deepfakes so that you won’t be so gullible. You have the power, use it responsibly.

Send in your problems to askdoss2020@gmail.com with TechTonic as the subject line