The “deepfake” revolutionizes the audiovisual media

The “deepfake” technique, based on the creation of audiovisual resources through the artificial intelligenceconstitutes “a revolution” for the media digital, just like Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, cinema or television were in its day.

This technique allows manipulating a moving image to “make it look like someone else’s”adds in an interview with EFE the doctor in Audiovisual Communication and professor of the Degree in Digital Design at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR, Spain), Nadia McGowan.

The American actor Bruce Willis recently sold the rights to his image to be used in future projects using artificial intelligence, and so do other celebrities, who add to the so-called “deepfake” technology.

McGowan clarifies doubts about what it implies, how it is used in the cinema and in advertising, what it means for the audiovisual industry, what are the privacy limits in the use of the digital image of a deceased or in the daily life of any citizen , in other aspects.

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Photoshop -photo editing program- gave the opportunity to “edit and manipulate” photographs, and currently, “deepfakes” allow you to manipulate videos and images “in a convincing way,” he explains.

According to the specialist, a few years ago, video manipulation could only be done by Hollywood studios, as happened, for example, in the movie “Forrest Gump” (1994). Or certain governments, as, according to her, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did, who had an “ultra-specialized” team that spent weeks manipulating a single image.

Risks and possibilities of manipulation

Instead, at present, there are applications that allow you to do this on cell phones, “which opens possibilities for manipulation”, emphasizes McGowan; also warns of the risks of him, since “it can be used for good, for evil or to entertain, like any other technology”.

In this sense, he acknowledges that the first applications of the “deepfake” were “very bad”, since “There were people who manipulated pornographic photos by embedding the photo of famous actresses in them, and the same thing happened with certain videos.”

Another misuse of this technique, he recalls, occurred at the beginning of the war in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, when a Ukrainian television channel was hacked -its computer systems were accessed illegally- and a false video was broadcast, in which President Volodimir Zelensky called on the Ukrainians to surrender.

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“It wasn’t a particularly good deepfake because the voice was very flat, the face had a two-dimensional look, and the movement was fluctuating,” McGowan stresses.

The positive part was that the Ukrainian government previously alerted the population that a situation like this could occur, so “there was an education in the public about this matter.” In addition, he continues, Volodimir Zelenski himself said that that video was false.

Educate on the correct use of “deepfake”

For these reasons, McGowan reiterates the need to educate the public on these issues so that they become aware, know that these technologies exist and consider the origin of the images.

The people who are dedicated to this field, he stresses, work on the development of detection tools, but “The technology that produces this falsification of images -alert- also improves.”

Despite this, he considers that “deepfakes” also have positive uses, as occurs in the cinema, with films such as “The Irishman” directed by the American Martin Scorsese, in which it was used to rejuvenate actor Robert de Niro; or in another of the Star Wars saga, “Rogue One”, with the character of the youngest Princess Leia.

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Another of the particularities of this technique is that it is used to use the faces of people who can no longer appear on screen, as when the Spanish actress, dancer and singer Lola Flores (died in 1995) was used to promote a brand of beer.

Or in the film that was in pre-production just before the pandemic “Finding Jack”, in which actor James Dean, who died in 1955, is brought to life.

EFE AGENCY.