Infox: “Deepfakes”, very realistic fake videos, poison social networks

Excerpt from a video montage supposed to show former US President Barack Obama.

This kind of "deepfake" is spreading on social networks to manipulate Internet users.

PA

Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow

2 mins

The "deepfake" ("hypertrucage" in French) allows you to create ultra-realistic photos or videos of real people by replacing one face with another or one voice with another.

This technique opens the door to the dissemination of many infox on social networks, where many Internet users are fooled and manipulated by montages.

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The “deepfake” technique, which has been used for some time in successful video games or TV shows, is gradually spreading on social networks in order to spread fake news.

This time, the virtual has the will to make us take any bladder for a superb lantern.

Via the web, many small programs already allow Internet users to easily falsify a photo or even a filmed speech.

That of a political or influential personality, for example.

Known as “deepfake” by English speakers,

are spreading.

They are becoming more and more efficient and are reviving the debate on the online manipulation of information.

► To read also: Deepfakes, the new depths of the Infox

For Europol, the generalization of “deepfakes” must be taken very seriously by all the countries of the European Union.

The European Police Office, in a report made public recently, sounds the alarm.

EU law enforcement agencies are urged to make combating the criminal use of this digital technology a top priority.

Europol indicates that cybercriminals can use it to manipulate information from the general public but also to ransom companies.

And the problem is that some of these trick programs, especially the most sophisticated, are now freely available on the Web, notes Xavier Duros, the technical director in France of the cybersecurity company Checkpoint: “ 

 »

“Internet users must remain vigilant when viewing images from social networks and always multiply their sources of investigation.

»

“Deepfake”: the view of Xavier Duros, cybersecurity expert

Dominique Desaunay

The harmful power of “

deepfakes

” is therefore very real 

Examples of the devastating effects of this manipulation of information are not lacking.

Two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, a “deep fake” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was broadcast on the Ukraine 24 news channel, following a hack into its transmission systems.

The president, in this fake video message, urged his people to lay down their arms.

And despite the poor visual quality of the clip, Internet users who did not try to disentangle the true from the false relayed this crude trick en masse on many social networks, which had to urgently unpublish all these videos.

► Also to listen: The "deepfakes" on the front of disinformation in the war in Ukraine

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