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The Times

1 Mar, 10 tweets, 3 min read

“It’s all the real thing,” Tom Cruise insists, looking into the camera.

Except the viral TikTok videos of him are not real: they’re “deepfakes”. But what is a “deepfake”, and why are they so worrying? thetimes.co.uk/article/deepfa…

Deepfake technology first emerged in 2017. It is able to place politicians, celebrities or just any normal person into a video they never participated in, making them say or do things that never happened 💻

The key tool used in deepfakes is machine learning. A person will feed a computer programme hours of real video footage and images of a person to give the machine an understanding of what that person looks like from different angles and under various lights

This would then be combined with computer graphics techniques to superimpose a copy of the person on to a stand-in actor, who may also be able to add their own references of how that person should move

The series of highly realistic fake videos of Tom Cruise have led experts to warn that deepfake technology is advancing much faster than most people are aware of and is set to become a key part of society in the future

@HenryAjder

While deepfake videos of this quality are normally done by professionals, many apps now offer basic “face swapping” technology that can fool people for a few seconds if they're casually scrolling, says @HenryAjder. This has allowed it to be used in cases such as “revenge porn”

@HenryAjder

“That for me is a worry. The future will be synthesised, this technology is not going away,” adds @HenryAjder

Sharing “deepfake” images should be a crime, according to experts who fear that the law is not keeping pace with technology and behaviour online thetimes.co.uk/article/sharin…

Read more on the deepfake videos of Tom Cruise thetimes.co.uk/article/deepfa…

@Mathilde_Pavis

Changes to the law will be necessary to safeguard everyone, writes @Mathilde_Pavis thetimes.co.uk/article/deepfa…

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