Twitter Starts to Address Deepfakes

Technology progresses at a mighty pace and it’s sometimes a little scary as to just what is possible with tech in the modern age. While it’s been an exciting time for society in general, the age of cyber threats has never been greater and such issues are at the forefront of every discussion when new projects arise. Social media platforms are powerful and carry great influence on society, Twitter is perhaps the place to go when you want to catch something happening as it happens. Many verified figures post on twitter regularly, even Mr. President. The social aspect is a big target as accounts with large followings can command public opinion. If you’ve been to the more random spots on the internet either through YouTube’s suggestive algorithm or your daily social media digest, it’s likely that you’ve come across a deepfake.

As the name suggests, deepfakes are doctored pieces of media which can include images, video, audio or a combination. It’s startling just how accurate these falsified media pieces have become. In some cases, deepfakes have served comical purpose. Whether it was Nicholas Cage’s face being plastered through your favourite movie scenes or Sylvester Stallone starring in Home Alone, using machine learning/deep learning has opened the door to another form of creative content in my opinion. Yet the technology also opens avenues to malicious media production including widespread hoaxes, defamation and other unsavoury situations.

Governments have since applied measures of detection and regulation, and media platforms have a responsibility to adjust their policies inline with the potential issues that deepfakes can present. Twitter has released its own set of rules in lieu of the damages caused by manipulated media. It doesn’t mean that all deepfake media has been banned, but deception and fabricated content are in the line of sight. In other words, fakes news built by media manipulation through use of such technologies. It’s a step in the right direction as falsified media can cause huge issues in society, sparking toxicity and swaying public opinion for personal gain.

It’s a scary reality and digital identity and verification of media is highly important in an age where it’s highly consumed by the masses. Twitter have recognised their responsibility and have summarised their findings and rulings on synthetic media here. Twitter already applies warnings for nsfw videos and it intends to apply further tagging of media to make users aware of the content being consumed on their platform may be a deepfake and if deemed to be of malicious intent, the posts will be removed entirely.

Lockhart Tech Blogs

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/new-approach-to-synthetic-and-manipulated-media.html