Hence the proliferation of so many comedic or satirical deepfakes. Some strive to make a point, like the one created by Peele or a more recent depiction of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg bragging about stealing your data.
Others are just internet-grade goofy. Consider the Q&A with the actress Jennifer Lawrence who speaks to reporters with the face of Steve Buscemi. (When shown the fake on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Buscemi seemed remarkably unfazed: “I’ve never looked better,” he said).
But the technology has, of course, been used for seedier purposes. The most popular application seems to be pornographic, with online forgers digitally grafting the faces of Hollywood celebrities onto the bodies of adult film actresses — without the knowledge or consent of either party.
In the case of Rana Ayyub, an Indian investigative journalist, the use was even more sinister. Last year, a fake sex video “starring” Ayyub was leaked online in an act of apparent retribution for her reporting that was sharply critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. As Ayyub told Huffington Post, the harassment and humiliation that followed sent her to the hospital with heart palpitations and led her to withdraw from online life.
Earlier this year, Berman introduced another bill that would give anyone involuntarily depicted in a sexually explicit video — including a digital fake — the right to sue.
But it seems only a matter of time before someone attempts to use the method for political purposes, he said.
That conclusion was reinforced a few weeks ago when an edited video of Nancy Pelosi went viral, in which the Democratic Speaker of the House appeared to be slurring her words as if drunk or cognitively impaired.
The video wasn’t a deepfake. Rather than use machine-learning algorithms, its producers opted for the more primitive technological methods of slowing down the footage and raising the pitch of the voice. But it still elicited a wave of bipartisan angst about the threat that forged video poses to our democratic institutions.
Earlier this month, Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio characterized “very realistic fake videos” as a national security threat akin to aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. And at a House hearing earlier this month, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff from Burbank warned of the possible “nightmarish scenario” in which “a state-backed actor creates a deepfake video of a political candidate accepting a bribe.” Just as worrisome, he said, the mere existence of deepfakes allows bad actors to more convincingly dismiss real information as fake.