What are Deepfake Videos? From Trump & Zuckerberg & Cage

How can you tell what's real in a video, and what isn't? Am I real? Hmm. Is this set even real. It's a question that's popped up a fair bit lately because of something called "deepfakes".

Using software to turn real videos of people talking into ones of them doing and saying things that they actually never did. Let's take a look.

 

What's wrong with a world where every single person is actually Nicolas Cage? Nothing! That's what. But it's become, seemingly, pretty easy to turn a real video into a fake one.


These videos are known as "deepfakes" using artificial intelligence to change appearances to make something look real even if it never happened. While it can be used for fun it's not always. This video of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg is doing the rounds at the moment.


It's taken from an old video, and made to look like he said something he really didn't.


This one, of US Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi slurring and stumbling over her words isn't real, either. But lots of people thought it was, and campaigned for Facebook to remove it.


Facebook's refused, and it won't remove Mark Zuckerberg's either. As deepfake technology gets better, many are worried that videos like these will be used to spread deliberately wrong and misleading things online. And it could be really hard to tell what's real, and what's fake going forward.


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